


Talon Trip

by pally (palliris)



Series: In Conclusion [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canada, Dangerous, Dissociation, Except like, Multi, Other, omg, please heed trigger warnings in the end notes, reaper thinks a lot, roadtrip au, sombra u done hecked up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-15 09:39:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12318462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palliris/pseuds/pally
Summary: When Reaper receives the hit order placed on one of Talon's own operatives, he does the first thing he can think of.He runs.(And drags Widowmaker- as well as the operative in question- along with him.)





	Talon Trip

**Author's Note:**

> HEY SO THERES ONLY LIKE. 7 TALON TRIO OT3 FICS SO I MADE ONE MYSELF. TAKE 24K AND TWO AND A HALF WEEKS OF MY TIME. pls someone ship this w me im so lonely. also ig one other thing of note is that this was meant to be read as, like, previously almost reaper76 (when they were both in overwatch; it didnt quite become a relationship or anything but there were feelings on both sides, with nothing actually being acted on)
> 
> more specific trigger warnings in the end notes!
> 
> also if anyone wants to play w me im Pallirisqué#1668 :>

The notice pops up on his communication hub sometime after communal dinner has been served. It shows up on the private line, which- 

That can only mean one of two things. Either it’s something inadequately mundane that requires not much additional thought, or something Talon executives deem protocol-inducing worthy. He gets a few of them every month, mostly propaganda spam marketed as important news. But something about this one catches him thinking twice before he taps it open with his clawed finger. It’s red. 

(He’s always hated that color.)

And as he reads the urgent notice sent to him in the dark hours of the night, fist clenching so hard the glass slowly begins to crack, Reaper sees red. 

* * *

Reaper wraiths quietly, sticking to the shadows while he makes his way across the compound. When a patrolling officer making his rounds passes by, Reaper waits until he hears the boots clicking past the corner before he comes out of the shade. It’s another three mundane, lifeless hallways until he's reaching the door he’s looking for. It’s marked with five purple fingerprints and is drawn over with a purple sharpie. Bright, lavender smiley faces contrast with the pale grey of the door, but Reaper doesn’t have the time to think fondly of the childish drawings.

He’s tearing off the metal clasps of his talons and ripping his black gloves away before he can even think about it. Reaper presses a calloused thumb to the print reader, and he barely notices the black, smoky smear he leaves when he drags his fingers off. 

Throwing the glove into the entryway, Reaper waits just long enough for the automatic door to close behind him before he’s moving again. He rushes past the common area without a glance, sidestepping haphazardly thrown shoes and clothing- some of which is his own- and trying not to choke on the smoke coming up underneath his mask. 

Reaper hears a sleepy groan from the bed as he passes it, and he almost stops. Instead of investigating the person in Sombra’s bed who is most definitely  _ not Sombra _ , Reaper rips the closet door open. He searches it frantically, unlocking a box hidden under some less tasteful bedroom items. When he displaces the items he needs from the box, he stuffs them into the pocket inside of his cloak lapel. 

_ “Chérie?” _ A tired voice asks behind him, but he can barely hear her over the pounding in his ears. Reaper’s still standing in front of the dark closet like the phantom of a bedtime nightmare, but maybe that’s true. 

Maybe he’s  _ worse _ . 

His hands are still shaking by the time Widowmaker comes up behind him, pressing her chest to his back. Even despite her natural body temperature, she feels like a furnace against him. Or maybe he’s the one that’s slowly turning cold, the shadows and demons crawling out of the ground and sliding into Reaper with ease. 

Widow’s fingers, long and deft, draw circles into his bare hand, and it’s comforting. 

“What’s wrong?” Widow asks, and she actually manages to sound a bit sincere about it. “Trouble with  _ Monsieur _ Doom again?” 

“Worse,” Reaper admits, wincing at how rocky it tastes and the rough grit of gravel in his voice. Sighing, Reaper finally lets his shoulders deflate and turns to face the woman. If she could see his face right now she might worry with more clarity, but even as it is he knows his behaviour is probably alarming her. Which explains the nature of her touch, and the implicitly casual tone of her voice.

Her hair is plaited back into a rose bun and the strap of her tank top seems to slide off her shoulder. There’s a slight imprint from where she had been resting on Sombra’s pillow, and her chapstick is smeared below the plump of her bottom lip. She’s beautiful. 

Reaper can feel the monsters inside him slow, settle down,  _ ease _ under her watchful gaze. 

“There’s a storm coming,” Reaper murmurs, allowing himself to sink back into her hold. He carefully unmasks himself. 

The smoke seems to instantly fill the room, and Reaper can feel the cracks in his face deepening and splitting further. Widow makes no outward expression, but her fingers tighten around his wrist. 

They aren’t usually this- this _touchy_. The three of them fuck, yes, and deny any sort of sentiment that had arisen afterwards. But he can’t help the small sound that escapes the cracks when he realizes what he’s about to do. _Insubordination,_ _traitor,_ his mind whispers, and the voice sounds a lot like a dead man he never knew. 

The bathroom en suite opens with a loud bang, and Reaper startles. His eyes frantically look towards the door, and he can feel even more smoke coalesce when he sees Sombra’s drowsy form.

The warm light encases around her like a halo, and Reaper is enraptured for the span of a breath. But then he’s twisting, moving, filling his chest with girth and making his figure more intimidating. 

He’s been a commander longer than he’s known his own name, and he  _ damn well _ is  _ not  _ going to crack under pressure when lives that are useful to him depend on it. 

(He refuses the small, more quiet voice that echoes in his head that whispers,  _ you care, you hate, you  _ love-) 

He addresses both of them as he is. As he stands. 

“Prepare to leave immediately. There is no jet waiting for us, and no one can know we are going. Take only what you can store on your person, and nothing more.” Reaper pauses. “No one leaves this room until we are ready to leave, and we make  _ no  _ pit stops.”

Even from across the room he can see Sombra subtly snapping to attention, awareness coming in abrupt doses. Widow has relinquished him from her grip and is already moving across the room, taking her night clothes off and slipping into the discarded, skin-tight suit. It’s the beautiful blue and white one, and Reaper is silently thankful that it’s mid-december when the base has extremely useful snow cover for her to blend into. 

Because Reaper can only take one person with him out of the base and away into hiding. Shadow wraithing has the possibility to carry other life forms, but it maxes out at one person. 

Widowmaker is on her own to escape. And Reaper thinks that maybe something in his red eyes conveys that, because she nods and is standing by, waiting for the debrief of the situation. 

When Sombra finishes changing into her own outfit, coat fitted with extra pads for the cold weather and chest slightly expanded from where she’s no doubt stuffed some extra gadgets and bullet casings, Reaper starts. 

“An order from the executive branch was issued to myself and the other branch leaders that prime asset Delta-11S30 was to be terminated on multiple accounts of mutiny and treason.” Reaper’s voice is curt, clinical. He can’t look at either of them. “The official order is to subdue the subject before bringing it back to the base, but there’s a hint that implies to shoot on sight. Exact words were,  _ ‘in case of resistance that might possibly lead to the escape of the subject or bodily harm to the captor, lethal force is enabled’.” _

Reaper finally casts a glance to the two women. Sombra is fiddling with the hem of her coat, nails clicking on the zipper, while Widow stands poised for action, muscles coiling. Letting his breath rush out of him again, Reaper lets his emotions sag. 

“If it were just sent to me I wouldn’t be so-”  _ worried _ “-so cautious,” Reaper starts, running his hand through his dark hair. “But it was sent to the other commanders, and it wasn’t just some petty offenses, but making full on  _ alliances _ with  _ world leaders _ . Sombra is, as of right now, considered just as much a threat to Talon as  _ Overwatch.”  _

“They aren’t  _ that  _ much of a problem,” Sombra murmurs playfully, but there’s a fright in her voice that she can’t quite hide. Her dulcet tones tremor slightly, and Reaper can practically hear her calculating odds and processing the information itself. “What’s the plan, boss?”

“Sombra and I will be using my abilities to get away from the base facility and into the nearest mountain range, where she will then cloak us while we get an acceptable distance away from the base. We will adjourn at the nearest town, and restock before moving once more.” Reaper looks to Widow. “Widowmaker will be on her own to escape, but she will have  _ some _ semblance of protection trying to leave while the issue is so newly ordered. She will take what she deems to be the most appropriate and cost-effective route to the town.” 

Reaper loses even more of the rigid pose he had been trying to keep. 

“I can’t-” he tries to say, but cuts himself off. Rubbing his face with his hand, Reaper pulls himself back together again. He has to be their leader right now, but he’s slowly turning into a nervous wreck at what he’s about to do. 

Reaper  _ searches, _ he really does; searches for something,  _ anything, _ that pulls him back towards what is about to become his former job.

But he can’t find anything. No lingering attachments to the long work hours and stifling atmosphere, no glee in his position at Talon or want for the dubiously given respect of other officers. 

“They aren’t expecting Widow to go against Talon, but they’ve definitely taken into account the chance that Sombra was alerted to the message once it delivered, so this room will be pilfered in the next fifteen minutes.” 

“What about you?” Widow questions, arms crossed and tone serious. 

“Talon will, without a doubt, expect me to take part in the hunt,” Reaper answers. “This will mean they took less extra force into account, so our time for the most probable chance of escape is in this period of time when they  _ haven’t _ realized I’m not on board.” 

“Why  _ aren’t  _ you on board, hm?” Sombra asks, voice waving again. 

Reaper doesn’t answer that. 

Instead, he lets his eyes go soft around the edges and lets another few tendrils of smoke escape the cracks in his face. He could reassure them, could emotionally bleed all over them, but then it would be a pain to wash out later. 

It’s not like they don’t already know why- and even if they don’t know now, they’ll figure it out soon enough. Reaper sees Widowmaker reach over and clasp Sombra’s hand, both women’s fingers encased in gloves, and he knows that Widow gets it. He can hear himself echoing the words inside his head even before she starts speaking. 

“We are a  _ team, _ and we work  _ together.” _ Widow’s voice is so strong and so sure Reaper doesn’t know how he’s supposed to be the one leading, when she sounds like she could rally an army with wits left to spare. 

(But somewhere deep down, he  _ does  _ know. Because she isn’t the same thing she was when she was first brainwashed and brought to Talon, wasn’t even a  _ person _ when she was first stolen from her life. She’s flourished and risen above her peers, has become strong enough to not only support herself, but her team as well.) 

“Okay,” Sombra whispers back, eyes wide and childish. 

And then in a flurry of movement, they are all moving and ripping apart the place, breaking and bonding any evidence in the tech-filled suite that could possibly lead Talon to them. Reaper lets out one last gust and deposits his mask back on his face. The clasps click shut in a satisfying manner as he goes back to the doorway where his glove had been tossed. When he’s fully situated, he turns to Widow. 

She’s pulling the strap holding her rifle tight, and it drags across the exposed surface of her skin. Even though Reaper knows she won’t feel the cold, he still finds himself throwing one of Sombra’s extra sashes at her. Widow catches it with a tight grimace. 

“Keep warm out there.” 

Widow nods. 

As she’s walking past him, Reaper catches her wrist and pulls her close. They don’t have the time to be doing this, but if anything, Reaper will  _ make time. _ She stuffs her face into the crook of his cloak, breathing in his scent as he does the same to her. This’ll be the last memory he has of her for the next few days  _ (it could be weeks could be months be days years  _ never-).

There had always been solo missions, as well as some instances when Reaper hadn’t been assigned as their commanding officer; but never anything like this. Nothing that made Reaper so sure that they might never be coming back from their mission. 

“Stay safe,” he whispers, and then she’s gone. 

Sombra appears behind him, and she fills the space that Widow had left. It feels like the chasm in his body is growing wider and deeper by the second, shadows threatening to overtake him. They grasp each other’s hands, Sombra’s bare forehead knocking against Reaper’s mask. 

Their bodies sink away into the shadows of Reaper’s ability, and they, too, disappear into the night. 

It’s almost embarrassingly easy to escape the compound. To the average person it might have seemed like going from one empty hallway to the next, but Reaper knows that seeing even one person- let alone _ three- _ at that time of night and in those conditions was  _ improbably busy.  _ Sombra’s body and his own are meshing together in new and profound combinations, and it feels wholly intimate in a way they’ve never been before. 

But he doesn’t spare more than a passing thought to that, as he needs to keep constant vigilance over his mind when trying to carry a person with him through the shadows. If he had been on his own, the trip might have taken around half an hour. 

It takes three hours. 

He can feel Sombra like he’s a home and she’s the occupant. If he let her, Sombra’s mind and his own could meld- become something  _ more. _ But he’s afraid, and doesn’t want that feeling to transfer over onto Sombra. Not when so much is at stake and he can already feel her nausea slowly building up the more they move as one. 

If he could comfort her, he would. But then again, he’s never attempted to embellish any positive feelings when carrying someone with him. So as they turn the corner, he tries with all of his might to send a wave through their shared essence. 

_ Warm light escape freedom  _ free, he tries, and instantly feels Sombra recoil. She attempts to run away, which basically equates to one small part of the shadowy mass making up their body trying to detach itself from the rest. But instead of letting her run, Reaper just holds Sombra to him tighter. Makes sure she knows she has to stay  _ with _ him instead of next to him, but tries not to feel like she’s being caged. Just detained for a short while. 

He does what is probably the equivalent of rubbing their cheeks together before he’s moving them again. Although he can practically hear her screaming expletives at him, he can tell she’s lost a bit of her nausea. She feels a little bit less lax and a touch alert, so when someone turns down the hallway they are on, he pulls their shadow flush to the ceiling. He knows they haven’t been spotted when the man clicks down the hallway, but another triad of people walk towards them. 

It’s only after they’re down the path and finally-  _ finally- _ opening up one of the back doors that leads to an inside garage, that Reaper realizes they hadn’t been walking towards Sombra’s room. 

They had been walking towards  _ Reaper’s. _ He doesn’t want to think about that, so he doesn’t. He’ll have to later, but for right now all he focuses on is getting them out alive. 

The garage is thankfully empty, so they just cross underneath the airlift choppers and weaponized vehicles from shadow to shadow. Slipping under the metal door and coming out into a snowy, white wonderland, the two of them finally go back to being human. Or in Reaper’s case, appearing human. Sombra comes to coughing, and she seems to be trying to regurgitate what she had for dinner. Wiping the grime off of her mouth as she stuffs some clear snow into it to get rid of the taste, Reaper surveys the area. 

There’s a security camera to their right, but he dispatches it with his gun before it can turn towards them. The wind is blowing lazily, and it kicks some snow off the ground before letting it drift back down lazily. When he’s given Sombra a scant few seconds to recuperate, Reaper holds his clawed hands out for her to take. 

He lifts her up, and she’s not heavy at all. It would be more frightening for him to worry about if he didn’t feel her nails digging through the thick material of his gloves. As it is, he gives her one more moment to adjust to the cold before they’re filling up each other’s space again in the shadows. They’ve become a demon, but there’s no one around to truly scare. Or maybe the only ones they need to scare are themselves. 

They roam across the desolate, pearly land like a swarm of locusts finding the next crop to descend on. And even though the journey is made better by the other consciousness riding alongside his own, each mile they cover seems to take eternity. They keep each other occupied, but seem to talk through chattering teeth, physically unbothered by the cold as they are. 

_ Stop stop stop rest, _ Sombra’s disembodied voice echoes, as if through a dark cavern. It feels like they’ve been wandering for days and days upon end, but Reaper knows it can’t have been more than a few hours. It’s still dark out after all. 

They stars twinkle above them like homing beacons when they fall back apart to rest. They don’t talk, not really. They just sit there, catching their breath and watching the stars move above them like fireflies. Reaper knows they aren’t  _ actually _ moving, but the dizziness is slowly consuming him from the long, prone hours spent in his alternate form. 

_ “We should-” _ Reaper starts, before startling at the sound of his own voice. It sounds worse than it was when he had been newly-resurrected. It sounds like his throat is clogged with slimy concrete, and he coughs once to try and clear it. “Let’s go.” 

Sombra looks like she would rather do anything than do so, but she still fades away into Reaper like a practiced motion. With a start, he realizes that it  _ is  _ a practiced motion by now, and it makes him feel sick and warm, all at the same time. 

The hours pass in the midst of half-abated snowstorms and the white reminds him of Widowmaker, but he can’t think about her. Reaper’s counting on her to make it. 

She will. She  _ has  _ to. 

The next time they stop, the sun is just starting to rise over a nearby mountain. It casts a radiant, reddish-orange glow over them, and they stare in awe for but a moment. Not even coming out of their wraith form, the two of them swirl and condense in one spot.They’ve come to find themselves needing less time for breaks, as if they’ve built up some sort of stamina for this. Like they were doing something as mundane as running a marathon. 

(Except- maybe they are? They’re running  _ from _ something instead of towards an objective, but there’s some sort of joke to be had at Reaper’s expense somewhere.)

When they finally stop for the final time, coming apart is easy. They reform as two solid, healthy beings, and although it sends a small curdle of fear down Reaper’s stomach, he can't help the heady rush of affection that rushes up to meet it. Sombra whines at what he can assume is losing the feeling of being a two-for-one package, and Reaper silently reciprocates the sentiment. 

The thought only serves to remind him of the last part of their puzzle that they are missing. Shaking his head to clear the thought, Reaper turns to his subordinate. 

“The rest of the walk will be on foot, as we are nearing the point where satellite footage covers. After you cloak us from Talon’s tech, we will be able to freely traverse the terrain and enter the city without being caught out.”

“You got it,  _ buhíto,” _ Sombra replies, saluting lazily. She draws out a small, black box from inside her breast pocket. When Sombra taps out what looks like a code into one of the textured sides, lines appear and light up on the sides as a lavender-esque purple. Tossing it up into the air, Sombra catches it and it creates a single pulse of purple that seems to spread out over a ten foot radius. “Don’t walk outside the circle, or it won’t cover you.” 

Reaper is close enough to her to spot the small snatch of dimples that show up as she grins, and it’s- 

The light catches the side of her hair and illuminates the smooth planes of her face. Reaper turns away. 

This time they feel each step of the journey, properly. Sombra starts complaining about her feet about an hour and a half in, and it quickly devolves into petty, verbal squabbling. Even so, the more they walk, the lighter they seem to feel. 

The pair isn't out of the woods just yet, but it certainly  _ feels _ like they are. It makes Reaper frown underneath his mask, though. After this they’ll be on the run for an indefinite period of time. Reaper wants to savor the time they have uniquely alone in peace, and if that means Sombra complaining about her dainty feet, he’ll take it. 

The banter is calming, even, and Reaper allows himself the space to relax. 

It’s about mid-day when they pause, huddling together in a terrible mimicry of their closeness from before. She wriggles her hand into his, and it’s almost nice. 

“C’mon,” Sombra prods, and they’re off again. 

By the time they are reaching the outskirts of the town, it’s well into the sunset. They come across a wide range of dogs there, all husky breeds and towering. They mip and whine at them, but ultimately back off when Reaper throws a bit of shadow at them. He has Sombra cloak them with a different type of barrier, one that affects the human eye and not just technology. 

It’s good that they use it, because not long after they come across a family. They are all bundled up, fuzzy trench coats a dull grey and cheeks rosy as they plow through the snow on foot. They are most likely traveling into town for some supplies, as the rural-suburban types usually do on saturdays. 

They pass a few decrepit buildings as they get deeper, but Reaper sees a few shining eyes peering outwards, so they aren’t as abandoned as they first appear. The town itself, once they reach it, isn’t quite overflowing with people. It mainly serves as a trading post for some of the other nearby towns, so there are some more high tech helicopters and snowmobiles sequestered behind gated enclosures. 

When they come across an unlit grocery store, he has Sombra wait on a frozen-over bench outside the establishment as he wraiths inside of it. He picks up a few non-perishables and stuffs them into a bag he nabs from the misc. aisle. As soon as he finds the water he pushes up his mask far enough to be able to down the drink in a few seconds. 

It feels like heaven on his tongue despite the fact that he doesn’t necessarily need it to survive. It slicks over the course ridges in his throat and makes everything feel less congested. Before he can really stop himself, he’s chugging another two down. 

Throwing a case of them into his marine blue backpack, Reaper ends up stopping by the hygenic section. He nabs a few casings of toothpaste, some toothbrushes, and other products that the girls might need. 

When he comes back outside, bad heavily draped over one shoulder, Sombra looks ready to fall asleep. Her head is bobbing and the beanie is starting to slip off where Reaper had placed it. Cheeks flushed from the cold and hair looking stiff, Sombra snaps to attention when he reforms out from under the plexi-glass door. 

Reaper tosses a water bottle to her without a word, watching as she gulps it down like he had. She tops it off with a quiet sigh, and she pulls the hat back down over her ears. 

“How much time is left?” Reaper asks, crossing his arms as he leans against the outside wall. Sombra hums, then throws the empty bottle off to the side. 

She draws the small box back out of her breast pocket, pinching it between her thumb and forefinger while turning it slowly. Sombra’s eyes squint as she inspects it, taking in how many of the purple light paths are still illuminated. 

“‘bout two hours off,” Sombra says, rubbing her chin with her free hand. “After that, it’ll take another three day’s worth of sunlight before it’s reusable.” 

“Can’t you just… plug it in and charge it up?” Reaper asks, scanning their surroundings.

“Unless there’s a compressed generator around here you know about that  _ I _ don’t, we’ve gotta wait.” 

Three days. That should give Widow enough time to catch up, if she were going at a reasonable pace. If she were  _ going. _ Reaper shakes his head to clear his thoughts. Gives one more glance to the hacker out of his peripheral view, and gets them moving again. 

The snow on the road is compact enough that their boots aren’t making imprints anymore, which is one less thing to worry about. There also isn’t enough cars on the road at this time of night to be worried about being run over either. Watching out for any buildings they could turn into a makeshift fortress for the next few days, Reaper watches the shadows. 

Lamps line the street, spaced approximately twenty-five meters from the next, so the lighting isn’t the best. Sombra makes a noise beside him when they pass a restaurant, and it’s the most life-filled establishment they’ve seen entirely. Noisy music pours out of it in waves, red and blue light bouncing out whenever anyone swings the sliding, metal and glass door open. It’s filled with mostly adults, but a few teens are intermingling. 

From what Reaper can tell, the gathering was made due to a football game, but one screen showcases hockey so he can’t be entirely sure. 

When he glances at her again, Sombra is  _ pouting. _ Her face is contorting into all kinds of shapes, from a small frown to a ghastly grimace when she notices him looking. 

_ “Comida,”  _ she drags out, bottom lip quivering in an exaggerated manner. 

Reaper sighs, and shakes his head in what he will never admit is begrudged fondness. “I pilfered some stuff from the store.” 

“Eh- and you didn’t share? C’mon,  _ jefe, _ show a little human decency here-” 

“For  _ later,” _ Reaper punctuates with a growl, tightening his grip around the backpack strap. 

He knows he must look a little ridiculous, with his schoolkid-like backpack and towering appearance, but no one can see them right now. Sombra hasn’t commented on it herself, but she has made a few aborted attempts at looking at it, so he knows he’s not out of the woods. 

By the time they’ve reached the very last inhabitable house, it’s amounted to practically nothing. He can practically  _ feel _ Sombra’s stomach rumbling from where he stands, but tries his best to ignore it. Not that it really works, but he’s trying. Reaper sighs for what feels like the millionth time today. 

Even Reaper can feel the bone-deep ache creeping into all of his senses. They haven’t slept in over a day, and Sombra’s had no food for longer. Along with all of the time spent in their combined form, Reaper’s just waiting for the axe to fall and the repercussions to spring down upon them. The journey has been almost too peaceful (if one could call it that) and he’s not looking forward to what the future is going to hold. 

It sort of hits him again when they stop near the opposite edge of town at a makeshift storage unit. It’s located behind the house of a technical worker, and is filled with all sorts of snow tools and rations. If he reached out from one end to the next it would fit about six full wingspans, so it feels more like a one-bedroom unit and less of a shed. 

Reaper looks at this miniscule area, and knows that he has no idea what’s happening. His whole plan had been made in a flurry of rash decisions, and there’s nothing keeping them safe.  _ Forever. _ But he can’t help but feel like his biggest fear is regretting any of it. 

He’s not fit to be a Talon officer, so that’s not what he’s going to be. Instead of a commander, he needs to be a leader. 

Breaking open the code-locked latch without visibly marking it isn’t hard, and Sombra’s in and out in seconds. But the feeling really starts setting in when they are sealing it back up from the inside, and Reaper is finally letting his whole entire body sink to the ground. There’s a nagging, persistent feeling of being locked inside his own body, but Reaper guesses it’s not a lie. 

The oozing, inky smoke pours out of his mouth and fills his mask as he exhales, long and deep and so, so  _ tired. _ This chance, this irrevocable path that he has taken, was not something a past man would have done. With no guarantee that even hiding was an option, even Reaper is deeply, profoundly surprised in himself that this was the thing that he had chosen to do. He chose. 

It was the first good decision he’s made of his own volition in years. He feels sick. 

They don’t click on the overhead light, as much as they both probably want to. There’s a smell of old gasoline in the unit, but it’s nothing they won’t get acclimated to if needed. Reaper leans against the stainless steel table perched on the left hand side of the room and practically wilts against it, glad to be sitting. Sombra weaves around him, stepping over his legs where they are outstretched towards the center of the room. 

Her face still looks flushed from the cold, and her ears are peeking out from underneath the beanie again. The metal earrings had gotten too cold to continue wearing while in the snow, so there are wooden replacements filling the holes they had left. 

He can tell that she’s feeling the chill because she’s shivering slightly. Sombra plops down right next to him, and they both press up along their sides as much as they can. After a moment’s silence, Reaper shifts. He brings the backpack around and unzips the main pocket. 

Grabbing the first can he finds and passing it along to Sombra, she groans softly  in delight. She pops the can open with her nails, and the sound reverberates throughout the metal room. He sees a flash of mangos from the can before the lip of the can is blocked from view by her mouth. 

Sombra slurps the sweet juice out noisily. As the sound of her eating settles throughout the room, Reaper hugs the back close to his chest, treating it like it’s some sort of comfort pillow. He tries not to think too hard about who it could be, but he gives up after a blue face jumps at the forefront of his mind. He wanders hazily from thought to thought, feet slowly falling to either side. 

Reaper doesn’t know when he closed his eyes, but when he opens them Sombra is unhinging the latches on his mask. His fist is tight around her wrist, but he loosens up once he’s coherent. Doesn’t let go, bit eases off enough to let her get to work. 

_ “Relajate, _ Reaper.” 

A check tells him that Sombra’s taken another can of  _ something _ out of his backpack of boy wonders, but he can’t really blame or grief her. Instead, he stays quiet and watches the look of concentration on her face. The moonlight is coming in from the one window adjacent to them, and it hits the back of her body and seems to wrap around to hit the sides of her face. 

She’s kept the beanie on, but discarded her gloves. It’s surprisingly warm in here. Although, Reaper doesn’t know if that's because of the room, or because of them. 

He thinks that if he could see his face right now it would be a sore sight, all droopy and terribly tired, features sunken and cracked edges sagging open. Watching her tuck it into the backpack, Reaper glances out the window. The moon is high in sky, and utterly captivating. 

The box, pulsating in purple, lays out to rest on a stool underneath the window, presumably to recharge in the moonlight. 

“You get stuff alright?” Reaper slurs out, mouth heavy as led. It sort of feels like he’s swallowed sand. He coughs into one of his fists, and a spray of grainy smoke puffs into the air. 

“Food is food is food,” Sombra replies matter-of-factly, smiling at him. It’s not sharp and cutting, nor pretentious or flirty like her usual smiles. 

It’s soft, and sorry. Reaper shuts his eyes.

“Go back to sleep, Reaper.” 

Sombra’s voice seems to keep his eyes shut, but he doesn’t truly fall asleep until the girl is placing a soft kiss on his forehead. He’s as close to safe as he’ll ever be. 

* * *

_ Not safe- _ is Reaper’s thought when he wakes up, the shrill sound of a scream in his ears. He’s instantly drawing out one of his guns and aiming it up and up and  _ up, _ because the person standing in the doorway is  _ tall. _

He can just make out a hint of tawny red hair underneath the man’s dull grey hat before Reaper’s knocking him over and choking him with the butt of his gun. Trying to scramble back, the man looks around frantically,  _ still screaming. _ Reaper slams a hand over his mouth. 

Reaper can still hear the man-  _ boy, _ his mind corrects, because this kid can’t be anything over the age of twenty- screaming behind his hand, but it’s muffled and quiet now. When he notices that there’s more of a chill on his face than previously, he realizes just why the kid is screaming so much. 

His face is exposed, all hard edges and gaping cracks. Reaper can feel smoke oozing out of them like festering wounds, and combined with the red tint of his eyes he must look like a deranged monster. 

_ (But isn’t that accurate- _ something whispers to him. This voice is the smallest of them all. Reaper thinks it might be his own.) 

Sombra must’ve awaken at the cacophony of noise, because he hears her mutter,  _ “Mierda.” _

By now the boy has stopped screaming and is making an attempt at whimpering like a dog, and Reaper takes stock of their surroundings while the situation is in moderate control. A cursory glance tells him that while the sun hasn’t come up yet, it’s probably well into the morning. This area doesn’t get much sunlight during the frigid December months, and night comes quicker. 

“I don’t want to have to kill you, so keep yourself quiet when I withdraw my hand.” _ Damn.  _ Reaper’s voice sounds like he’s swallowed a pile of gravel, but he’s slowly becoming accustomed to it grating in his ears. As he had described, when Reaper removes his hand, the boy stays quiet. 

And then he opens his mouth to scream again. 

_ “Quiet,” _ he hisses, clamping his palm back down. This time, with enough force to rattle the guy’s skull a bit. 

Reaper can feel Sombra coming up behind him. She looks more tired than she had before they started sleeping, and he guesses it’s because they’ve probably gotten a mere four or five hours of sleep. They need fifty. 

“Cute,” she says, and he throws a look at her. “Can we keep him?” 

Withdrawing his hand again, Reaper sends a scathing grimace to the boy. He stays obediently silent, but there’s a fearful look on his face. The boy bites his lip so hard it draws a teardrop of blood. 

“Now,” Reaper begins, sitting down and pressing his full weight to the kid’s chest. “What is your name?”

“A-Anna-Dean,” he stutters out, cheeks flushed from the cold, but stark white everywhere else. Reaper can just make out the dark, velvety brown of the kid’s eyes. 

“Anna...Dean?” 

“Yes, uh, sir,” the boy-  _ Anna-Dean, _ his mind supplies- states. He’s back to biting his lip again, as if speaking is the only way to stop him from doing so. “Anna-Dean Ghillard. I go by- by Andy, though, so.”

Sombra snickers behind him, and laughs out, “Someone wanted a daughter.” 

Reaper would reprimand her, but they don’t have enough time. They  _ never _ seem to have enough time nowadays.  

“Who lives in this house? Any family, friends, omnics?”  _ Who might you tell that there are two potentially lethal strangers sleeping your storage unit- _

It takes him a second to reply, but when he does, he’s obviously wary about giving the information out. 

“S’just me and my older brother, Josie Ghillard. Uh. No one else, sir,” Andy replies. “W-we both work down at the- the technical firm a few hundred feet out. Workin’ on some new transportation tech for omnic software.” 

“Your mamá  _ really  _ wanted girls,” Sombra states, and starts laughing almost loudly. He hushes her with a glare.

From where Reaper’s crouched, the foyer lights look like they are on. “Is he home?” 

“Still waiting on him,” Andy manages, coughing a few times to clear his throat. The boy's voice is still high and unmeasured afterwards. “Supposed to be home in, uh, ten minutes.” 

The garage door starts opening. 

“Maybe less,” Andy chokes out. Reaper’s hand tightens over the boy’s throat, who starts whimpering again. His eyes start to fill with salty tears, lip wobbling.  _ “Please-”  _

“Re.  _ Lax,” _ Reaper commands, and starts dragging the both of them up off the ground. 

“Not my brother,  _ please, _ I’m  _ begging  _ you-” Andy cries quietly, continuing to babble as Reaper draws them around the side of the house. Sombra follows them, covering their footprints in the snow as they go. She also discreetly locks the unit door again, making sure it was exactly as they’d first found it.

Crowding the kid against the side of the house and wrapping a hand across his mouth, Reaper takes everything in. 

Andy’s brother is even  _ taller, _ sturdier- must be around six foot, five inches. His hair is more coppery, and there’s a slight limp to his right side. Josie can’t be anymore than a scant two or three years older than Andy. They’re both so very young, just cresting the peak of youth. 

Reaper doesn’t necessarily have to kill them, but- 

He doesn’t  _ want _ to, either, and Reaper feels just a little bit more broken inside.

“Keep quiet, and nothing will happen to you  _ or  _ your brother,” is what comes out of Reaper’s mouth. He backs the statement up with another tight squeeze on the kid’s jaw. “My companion and I will be staying in your storage unit for the next three days, and you are  _ not  _ to tell anyone. If you do, you are putting their life in my hands.” 

Andy nods shakily, and after looking into the kid’s eyes once more, releases him. Stumbling inelegantly, all gangly limbs and terrible composure, the redhead wipes his cheeks and eyes in a desperate manner.

He doesn’t look back, but he must feel the weight of Reaper’s gaze on him because his back seems to quiver. Andy actually manages to somewhat compose himself before he reaches the open garage door, greeting his brother with a warm, practiced smile. 

After the two disappear into the confines of the house, garage shutting noiselessly, Sombra reaches out and takes his hand. He’s glad for it, because all of a sudden his knees feel weak and the pit of his stomach drops out from under him. Subconsciously using his wraith form had definitely come with a price after overusing it so much, and right now he’s paying it in loss of bodily functions. 

_ This isn’t going to work, _ he thinks, but does not say. Even though Reaper can’t really feel his legs right now, he needs to be the strong one for the both of them. But even as Sombra’s squeezing his hand, maybe the thought crosses his mind that he’s not the only strong one here. 

Sombra can’t survive the way he can, can’t escape from anything if only she had the strength. She’s weak in ways he will never be, but he doesn’t think less of her for it. Only worries. 

Worrying is a worrisome feeling. 

Reaper doesn’t want to care, but he does. That’s almost more worrying than Sombra’s vulnerabilities. 

There’s another ache there, sharp and tense and filled with images of icy blue, but Reaper doesn’t allow himself to dwell on what they cannot know. Sombra leads him back to the shed, letting him rest on her. She can probably tell just how badly the encounter had affected him, and he hates it. Once more she types in the code. 

If Andy is smart enough he’ll keep his brother away from the shed. If not- 

Well, Reaper doesn’t know how well he'll react to being roused once again. The deeper, darker demon inside him whispers mean little things, telling him that even if they  _ aren’t _ disturbed, they still have to trim excess threats. There is no such thing as being too careful, after all. 

“It’s fine,” Reaper says later, conviction clear in his voice as they curl into each other. She’s laying between his legs, resting against his chest comfortably. Mask back on for caution’s sake, he resists the urge to dig his face into the junction of her neck. 

He would just be taking away precious heat that she needed through the mask’s metal exterior. 

_ “She’s _ fine,” Reaper whispers even later, but this time it’s stupidly weak in a way he wants to gut himself for.  _ To care, to care, to care _ echoes indolently in the back of his mind, because Reaper can’t  _ care,  _ not when there are such high stakes. 

There are better men a past shade of who Reaper once was had given his morality for, and not again. Never again. Reaper is his own and his own he shall be. 

Sleep comes easy, but only after he’s repeated that in his mind so many times it shouts right over the echo, like a broken track record.

* * *

Reaper wakes up feeling more rested than he has in  _ years.  _ His arms are still wrapped firmly around Sombra’s waist, but he takes a second to unravel them to check the time. The numbers read  _ 5:37 AM. _ It’s been a whole day.

Sombra is still asleep, so he takes the rare chance to study her relaxed features. There’s no trick or play to be had, so the planes are smooth; soft even. The even line of her shoulders sag against Reaper’s chest, her weight resting on him. He likes this. He feels  _ needed.  _

But at the same time, she’s curled into an easily maneuverable pose. Her right hand rests on her hip, where her gun is cocked and ready. There’s a certain unevenness to her breath that suggest sleep, but not a very deep one. 

She could just as easily protect him as he could her. Even though it’s undeniably true, it still twists something in Reaper’s chest. If he could steal them away, all three of them, and get them somewhere  _ truly _ safe, he would. 

Delusions of grandeur are best left for stronger men. Or, weaker men. But never Reaper; not as he is now. 

He strokes the exposed trail of Sombra’s neck and tries to breathe her scent in. It’s been a bit washed out by bitter starkness and undertones of sweat, but her natural musk shines through a bit. It’s warm and comforting, and Reaper tries to get all that he can of it through the slits in his mask. Wishing he could take it off but not really wanting to risk it, he compromises and unhinges just the bottom two clasps along the jawline. 

It pops off with a faint hissing sound, some ink swells dispelling and evaporating into the air as it goes. The bottom of his bristly chin tucks back into her shoulder, beard tickling against her skin. 

There’s not going to be any relaxed moments like this for a while. Reaper wants them to be moving on from their current location, and  _ soon, _ but this is one of the only inhabitable places for a hundred miles or so. They are exposed and he wants to move on from here, but he’s too exhausted to do any more than scare a kid into submission. 

And even that small thing had been more than he could handle. 

This is where they will have to stay, because when Reaper tries moving his legs, he finds that they are numb. Clenching his jaw, he tries to keep his breath even. His pulse is starting to run just a bit, lagging and then picking back up like a confused and swayed hare. He can feel it pulsating out, the tar gunking up his veins constricting and expanding. 

_ Keep it together.  _

There are a few moments where he’s just sitting there, trying not to let a good freaking out consume his senses. It’s hard, but he’s built from sturdier materials than just a flimsy piece of wood that breaks at every gust of wind. He imagines the wind he can see gusting outside getting into the shed, but he actually finds that it’s almost sort of warm in here. 

Not that it really matters for his own body, but for Sombra it could mean life or death. He investigates the surrounding area with his eyes, and sees a thermostat on the wall next to the door. The temperature is currently set at 68 degrees fahrenheit, which isn’t even that hot. But compared to the cold and lifeless less than zero that is the outside, it almost feels like a furnace. 

There are no actual buttons or keys on it, so that must mean-

“Looks like the kid isn’t completely useless,” Reaper mutters, mouth pulling into a tight grin. It feels more like a grimace. 

Sombra groans beneath him, but he just rubs his chin scruff back into her neck to placate her. She settles again quietly. There’s not much that can be done while he’s stuck like this, but there’s also not much that either of them can do anyways. If they really wanted to they could take a chance on one of the more abandoned buildings on the outskirts of town, but he could sense dark and rancid things coming from there. 

If Reaper can’t be trusted to clear out a building to empty on untrained monsters, he thinks that this is the lesser of risks. And with the way Sombra is rationing out what he had picked up, they shouldn’t have to leave until the third day. Hopefully neither of them gets too stir-crazy once the lethargy has worn off, but that should be the least of their worries. 

Sombra’s heartbeat and the sound of swirling wind and snow outside are the only sounds besides himself that he has to keep him company. It’s terribly boring, but the thermostat also makes a dull, beeping noise every few minutes or so now that it’s on. The girl wakes up sometime around 11:30 AM, and he couldn’t be any more glad for it. Stretching her arms up and out, Sombra yawns loud enough for her voice to reverberate throughout the room. 

When she turns to look at him he notices that the dark circles underneath her eyes are now slowly fading. She didn’t bring any makeup- at least not that he’s aware of- so she has nothing to cover them up. Her lipstick is gone, leaving behind a dark red that’s just as pretty, but natural. He wants to kiss her, so he does. 

Lifting the mask just a little bit more, he presses his chapped lips to hers. 

“Ugh, morning breath,” she complains when they pull away. 

“Then don’t kiss back-” Reaper starts to growl, but she just reels him back in by his hoodie. 

“Never said I didn’t want to,  _ jefe,” _ Sombra smirks, and then everything just devolves from there. It turns slow and less heated than even the decently warmed room they are in. 

When they come apart again, Reaper just sighs. There’s a quirky grin on Sombra’s face, and her hair is sticking up in various places. He thinks that if they were some place better they might indulge in something a bit more promiscuous, but that is neither here nor there. 

“Ridiculous,” he grits out, rubbing his thumb into her hip. 

He feels a certain tinge of wrongness in the air, and it’s accompanied by the image of Widow in his mind. Reaper wants to ask Sombra if she feels the loss of their sniper as well, but knowing her, she’d just say something like,  _ I count as a sniper, all that damage on my gun, _ or something just as equally ridiculous. Snorting, Reaper smiles. 

“What’cha thinking about, Reaper? A good joke? I have a  _ lot _ of them-”

“I don’t want to hear any jokes, Sombra.” 

“What about a small one-”

“No.”

“Just an  _ itty-bitty _ one-”

_ “No, _ Sombra.”

“Well too bad,” she states, pushing her hand up his mask and covering his mouth. “Knock-knock.”

Reaper just glowers at her from behind the eye slits, and refuses to answer. 

“Knock _ -knock,”  _ Sombra says again, but this time slaps his chest. She removes her hand from his mouth. “C’mon, Reaper, there’s nothing else to do in this hell hole.”

Giving her one last nasty look, he relents. “Who’s. There.”

“To,” Sombra giggles. 

“To who.”

“No, silly,” Sombra laughs again, biting her lip. “It’s to  _ whom.”  _

It’s the least funny joke he’s heard in his life- not that he laughs at jokes, he’s not that kind of monster- and all it is is a correction to his grammar. If anything, it should make him feel contempt and annoyance at the hacker. 

But really, all he can do is chuckle quietly. He’s had a flavorless last few hours, and at this point even an outdated radio could give him more entertainment than the silence. Sombra starts laughing with him, and Reaper becomes so intimately thankful that they’re alive right now. Nothing is better than hearing her laugh, and by god that’s a bit sopping wet with sappy feelings. 

He never thought that it would cross his mind, but Reaper’s also thankful that he’s alone in his mind right now. 

Once they’ve had their fun, Sombra gets up to stretch her legs. While she does so, Reaper goes to the window and peers out. There’s a bedroom light on in the main house, and Reaper can’t guess whether it’s from Andy or Josie. Judging by the fact that Andy gets back earlier than his brother, it’s probably him. 

He can’t be sure, though. He can never be sure. 

Drawing back from the window, Reaper allows himself to get in a good stretch as well. His muscles still feel tense and coiled, but letting them unwind just a little bit takes some of the pressure off. Throwing his head from one side to the other, Reaper’s neck gives a few good, loud cracks. 

“Blech,” Sombra complains, sticking her tongue out at him. “Don’t you know that’s bad for you,  _ buhíto? _ What kind of effect would that even have on your body? It’s a bit fucked up already.” 

“Nothing it can’t handle,” he answers. Reaper cracks every single one of his fingers, one by one. Satisfying. 

It must look anything but, to Sombra. She gags profusely, mimicking the action of retching as she clambers onto one of the metal tables. He smirks, and slots even more of his mask clamps off. He pushes it up enough that he can slip it back down in a fix, but also high enough that Sombra can see the hungry expression on his face.

Walking up to her with a slow gait, Reaper just smirks and places both hands on the table’s edge. Sombra draws her legs up to her chest, hugging them and glowering at him petulantly. Stroking his gaze up her body, he comes to a stop at her eyes. 

Reaper watches her as he brings his right hand up. Before she can say anything, he crack his right thumb again. She gives off a loud squeak, and slaps at his hand. 

Undeterred, Reaper runs his hand up her leg, stopping at the knee. He rubs at the spot, before cracking his wrist with a quick snap. Sombra shakes her head, slightly curled hair flying with the motion. 

Reaper brings his other hand back up and starts re-cracking the fingers there as well. It’s inanely amusing to see Sombra cringe- however fake- away from something so simple as cracked knuckles. It’s stupidly childish, and Reaper loves her. 

“So you can handle taking out a target, but not a few cracked joints? What kind of operative are you, Sombra?”

“A renegade one, apparently,” she replies, and the mood instantly just.

Drops. 

Sighing, Reaper smiles ruefully and grips her knees again, but this time in comfort. Shows her his face and prays that there’s just a small smidgen of hope mixed in there. 

“Well, if you are, then so am I.” 

Sombra twitches once, twice, before going still. Then, like lighting a candle, her eyes go all intense and fond and it’s honestly going to be the highlight of his thoughts for a while after this. It’s almost nice to know there’s another person- monster or not- beside you, experiencing the same terrible loss all the same. As if there was something infectious in her smile, Reaper can feel his face replicating Sombra’s. 

The rest of the day passes in a slow, languid impasse of thought and reply. They swap short anecdotes and tales of the old and the new, and it’s almost like some sort of therapy session for the both of them. With not much else to do, talking and playing becomes their central pass time. And occasionally, strategizing comes up. Neither wants to do it, but the feedback on his plans allows for some outside insight. 

Usually, Reaper would be repulsed by the idea of running his plans through someone else. Now, it just feels right. 

The two owners of the house get in at about the same times they did yesterday, and Andy has the common sense to stay well away from the two of them. It helps that Reaper stands menacingly by the windowsill as the kid drives by, body unmoving. Sombra had accused him of looking like a deranged stalker from a shit horror movie, but it wasn’t entirely inaccurate. By the time Josie is pulling into the garage, it’s dark yet again. 

“It always feels like night, here. And even sleeping gets a bit boring,” the hacker complains, twirling a long strand of hair around her finger as she fiddles with the cloaking box. There’s an advanced rubik's cube in her other hand, solving the seemingly hard puzzle with one hand and half a mind. “Ugh.”

“Another two days left, if your calculations are to be trusted.”

_ “No mames- ¿me está llamando una mentirosa?” _ Sombra asks, affronted. 

“It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve lied to me, Sombra,” Reaper replies, pressing his fingers to her thighs. She had been complaining about her legs being cramped from the tight space, and despite the fact that he does quite know she’s a pesky liar who lies, Reaper had nothing better to do than massage them. And it’s not as if he’s not enjoying it, either. “I don’t think I need to remind you what happened in Russia.”

“Oi, that lady was in some deep trouble- I was helping her, woman to woman.” Reaper snorts. “Okay,  _ maybe _ it was a teensy bit bad to lie to Talon-”

“To  _ me.” _

“-but I had perfectly decent reasons for doing so. And we’re all omnic haters here, right? No undying love for them? I’ll admit, it would interesting to crack one open and examine it, but the blueprints I have are well enough. Splitting one up would just be messy.”

Reaper snorts again. “Because being messy is what you’re worried about.”

“Yes! Exactly,” Sombra exclaims, and then makes a triumphant noise. When he looks up, Reaper sees the solved cube in her hand. It looks like the symbol that pops up from her tech gloves as she hacks something. 

“Did you really make your own Rubik’s cube?” Reaper asks, and manages to sound a tad bit mocking.

“Reaper,  _ cariño,  _ I make  _ all  _ of my personal items. From my shirt to my shoes, it’s all mine,” Sombra replies, and shimmies a little on her stomach. Her legs wiggle a little bit under his groping hands, and he presses them back down. “Though I really wouldn’t mind using some omnic parts for a device I’m planning. Know where I can get a fresh, new omnic that isn’t polluted with radiation or just a lump of scrap metal from the war?”

“Numbani is chock full of them, but heavily guarded. Dorado, though-” Reaper starts, and then stops. He’s done his research, but Sombra is strong. She can handle a few minced words. “Dorado has that celebration, right? It might actually be a good place to hide. Low-grade weapons, almost no security, lots of people. Easy to get lost in the crowd.”

Sombra swallows, and it sounds loud in the quiet room. The thermostat makes a diluted beep in the background before she says, voice unwavering, “Yeah. It would be good, wouldn’t it?” 

“Mhm.” 

“If-” and now she stops, waits a tick. Starts again. “If the spider doesn’t find us here, I can set off a beacon for her to follow down there. There won’t be enough coverage for anyone to find out the exact location, even if they were looking. And it’s not like they would expect _me_ to go back there. Or maybe they would? Who knows.” 

“It’s as good an idea as any. At least it isn’t freezing down there,” Reaper murmurs, moving down to her feet. He presses his fingers there, and he’s glad she isn’t ticklish. He’s done all sorts of things to these feet, so he should probably know. “She knows to be watching out. It might take her two out of the three days just to arrive here. Or perhaps even the full three days.”

Sombra must know what he’s hinting at, because she makes a displeased sound. If worst comes to worst, they might have to take one of the helicarriers and go. With or without their third member. They both have full confidence in her abilities, but there’s a shining beacon on both Sombra and Reaper so bright that it’ll burn Widowmaker if she comes too close. 

This is the most he’s allowed himself to think of her for days, and it feels excruciating. Like he’s forming and reshaping his insides, melting them down and pouring them into their respective molds. When enough time has passed without either of them saying anything, Reaper sighs. He’s been doing that a lot, lately. 

Not that he wasn’t used to repetitively sighing in his companions’ collective presence, but it’s been verging on the point of insanity as of late. Reaper doesn’t think he’ll ever get a break from this point onward. 

“Widowmaker is sturdy,” Sombra begins slowly, then all at once, “and she isn’t going to be deterred by just a little  _ snow. _ She’s been subjected to your coaching, Reaper, so I’m sure she can handle anything; much less a little bit of frozen water. Does she even need to keep warm? I don’t think I’ve ever seen her wear a coat.”

“I gave her one of your formal sashes,” Reaper says. He knows Sombra’s question is rhetorical, but he wants to keep the fire of this conversation going. Just talking about their third member makes it feel like she’s closer than her actual current location, trapped in the frigid winds somewhere outside. “But no, she doesn’t. Need a coat, that is.”

“Must be nice; able to play in the snow without ever catching cold. Damn, does she get sick? If she doesn’t, that means I can’t make her sick-soup,” Sombra pouts. “Everyone loves my sick-soup. Sombra’s sick-soup special.”

“If by sick-soup you mean,  _ ‘I’m going to  _ be _ sick’ _ soup, then I’m succinctly glad she won’t get to try it.” Reaper’s been on the receiving end of the so-called soup- and what comes out of Sombra’s cooking bowl only ever looked closer to chunky gravy than soup- and has always had to keep himself from vomiting the calamity back up with the rest of the acid in his stomach. “When we are living together, you are not allowed to touch anything in the kitchen.”

“Living together? Ay,  _ buhíto, _ I didn’t know we were so domestic in our old age.” 

Reaper tenses up. He counts lowly under his breath, squeezing his eyes shut over the ensuing headache. 

“Yes, Sombra, I’d gather that from now on we will all be living together; however permanently that may be.” Because Reaper doesn’t want to hope for anything more than a good few months with them, after everything; hope doesn’t do much good these days. 

Sombra laughs, the sound like the twinkle of two bells catching on one another, “of course, silly little owl.” 

The woman turns around to face him slightly, pulling her legs from beneath his hands. She lays on her side, and smashes her cheek into her right palm. There’s a careful air about her, and she searches the monotonous mask he wears. He knows she she can see everything beneath it, physical eyes forgiving. 

“You’re confusing, you know?” Sombra starts with, and it’s not really what Reaper was expecting. 

“I could say the same for you, Sombra.” 

She hums, tongue poking the inside of her cheek. “Well, whatever. Not really up for self reflection. But my advice; you could really do some good with it.” 

“Once again, pot, kettle, black,” Reaper groans out, resting back on his haunches. Another verbal impasse, then. “And in quotation to a certain someone I am unhappily acquainted with,  _ well, whatever.” _

“So does this mean this is our first house together?” Sombra bowls right on, waving her free hand to dissipate any tension. “I think we can do better. Could we get a dog?”

“We aren’t getting any pet, much less a dog,” Reaper growls, and picks at a fray in his jacket. It feels sort of hot in here right now. 

“But we have to have a mascot! Now that we aren’t Talon, we need something to give us a new name.” 

“I don’t think you  _ ever _ were Talon, Sombra,” he answers. Reaper pauses slightly, then says, “Cats are better.”

Sombra’s face goes positively delighted. Looking as if Christmas had come early, she hoots and lets out a rambunctiously loud laugh. “I  _ knew _ you must’ve liked small, fluffy things. Everyone loves them deep down inside.” 

Reaper smirks, triumphantly and mirthlessly. 

_ “Sphynx _ cats, Sombra. Sphynx cats.” 

“Are you kidding me?! Those gross little ratty things? They aren’t even that populated anymore, so it costs a ton!” Sombra complains, and continues to list off everything inherently wrong with hairless cats. 

“They don’t shed,” Reaper points out, relishing in the disgusted look his companion makes. “They also make excellent partners. Much better than any tabby, at least. Specifically bred instead of being let loose into the wild to reproduce and gain all kinds of deformities.”

“Every cat is a good cat, regardless of deformities!”

“Then doesn’t that include Sphinxes, too?” he asks calmly, but now there’s the edge of a smile in his voice that he can’t quite hide. 

_ “Ugh!” _ Sombra shouts, throwing herself forward to lay on her stomach. Ignoring the string of spanish expletives she starts muttering into the ground, Reaper turns around to the backpack. The hacker is probably due for some food soon, and it’s the only thing he has to appease her right now. It’s not as if they can just go for a run or do something of equal physical exertion.

“Here,” he says as means of warning, and throws a can at Sombra. It hits the side of her head, and she just glares back up at him. But she takes the can, and pitches her arms forward to rip off the top. “Savage,” Reaper chides when she starts drinking the juice from it so fast it drips down her chin and onto the ground. 

She sticks her tongue out at him and continues to drink the pineapple juice from the can. When that’s done, she starts taking out chunks and popping them into her mouth. Sombra pulls off with a pop and a sigh when she’s finished. 

“‘M sick of fruit and vegetables,” she complains dejectedly, resting on the ground with her cheek, well away from the small nectar puddle she had created. “Why can’t I just be like you and feed from the torture and punishment of innocent souls?”

“You don’t have the heart for it,” Reaper says, but quirks another grin at her. 

“But then that means you have to  _ have  _ a heart, right? And I’m 99.83 percent sure you don’t have one.” 

“Oh?” That’s a bit accurate. “Where’d you get the .83 from? I’m positively certain there’s at  _ least  _ a .74 percent chance of me having a heart. Or one that’s intact, anyways.”

The banter is nice, somewhat. It’s normal, at least. There’s less animosity than usual, even. 

Although Reaper’s encounters with them had tempered somewhat, a derogatory and almost offensive sort of back and forth insulting session always proved comforting. It feels a bit like home. 

They spend the rest of the night like that. He makes Sombra fall asleep against him before he even allows himself to contemplate sleep, but he’s glad for it. Watching Sombra is like a lullaby he’s never heard, and Reaper’s eyes close down shut and heavy only after a few times of trying. Her presence is like a net of warmth and safety for him, which is-

It would be disgusting if it weren’t so great.

Reaper is the kind of monster who dreams in dilapidated and diluted tales; never remembers the good ones, but the bad ones become so foggy and unrecognizable that they blur together. So if he wakes up the next morning feeling shaky and groggy, the only thing on the edge of his tongue blood and smoke and nothing at all, he’s glad for his terrible nighttime memory. He thinks he remembers a flash of blue, but doesn’t want to chase that particular rabbit so early in the morning. 

Especially when there’s someone else in there with them. 

Instead of moving immediately, Reaper finds himself immobile. Watching, like a passenger in his own body. He can’t quite clear the patches from his vision until he gives himself a few seconds of reprieve, but when he does, he’s glad he didn’t move. 

And is hunched around the thermostat, warily looking from the window, to the door, to Reaper and Sombra, and back again. Reaper is thankful he keeps his mask on to sleep now, because Andy can’t tell that he’s awake. And from the uncanny breath pattern Sombra is holding, he can tell she’s somewhat lucid as well. 

The kid is mumbling under his breath, but reigns it in once he looks back over at their prone forms. Tilting his head minutely towards him, Reaper assesses the kid’s actions. It seems as though the thermostat  _ can _ be monitored by the inside, but it needs a fingerprint code. Andy pulls at his worn cap, sliding it back down over his ears where it had risen up. Looking back at his visitors one last time and visibly cowering just a touch, Andy worms his way back out of the storage unit. 

_ At least he has the balls to come in while we are here, _ Reaper thinks. If it weren’t for that Sombra might be suffering the cold, although nowhere near as bad as the outside. He’s just surprised the kid hasn’t changed it back down to cold out of spite. 

But loved ones can really force someone’s hand- quite literally in Andy’s case, Reaper supposes. Admirable even, for a mouse to get so close to a preying feline. And two at that. 

Thinking terribly of the waning darkness outside and contemplating the act of leaving a dead animal on Andy’s front porch, Reaper feels Sombra squeeze the sides of his arms. The muscle mass there flexes, then softens under her touch. 

“Would it be so bad if I hack their central system?” Sombra whispers into the darkness, almost guilefully. 

“I would feel awfully bad,” Reaper answers, mock-pity evident in his tone. “They seem a bit tech-dependent as it is.”

“The generator was a  _ 200 kilowatt model.  _ These kids must be making some major dough,” she continues whispering, but this time with jealousy in her mouth like cotton. 

Humming around her, Reaper takes a water out of the backpack to clear his throat. It feels akin to a clogged drain; like the nightmare is stuck there, hiding where he can’t necessarily see it. The darkness hides under his skin; and when he’s feeling especially piteous, it wears his skin like some strange, meaty coat. 

“Strange,” Reaper mutters, because Sombra’s touch makes him feel just a little bit more like himself. It’s wonderful and frightening. 

“Hm? What is?” 

“Nothing,” he answers, but takes Sombra’s hand and rubs her fingers. His thumb skates over her skin, pressing to the longer nails with reverence. The paint is chipped and faded, but Reaper thinks it still looks beautiful. Hell,  _ everything  _ about Sombra is unequivocally alluring. 

When he had first began this downward spiral towards their three-way…  _ whatever  _ it was they had, Reaper hadn’t wanted to jump right in. But with the two of them towing him along, Reaper supposes it was only to be expected that they would drag him in, deep and fast and hard. It went through the stages of lust-ridden moments straight to this heaping pile of semantics that he had come to find. 

Come to find, but not-

Not necessarily come to terms with, not just yet. That’s more than a mountain to move. It’s like a truck trying to carry the weight of an ocean on it. Warped inside the beauty of something so vast, but ultimately crushed. The swelling tide and rising abyss is familiar to Reaper, but nothing as  _ vast _ as their feelings. Because feelings are disgusting, after all. 

They aren’t built for feelings; all creatures of the night stolen from their homes and turned into something darker and more malicious through Talon. Widowmaker took the worst of it, but Reaper and Sombra weren’t absent from the brainwashing. 

Sombra joined for her own profit, bent on personal goals and left with a smoking heap of nothing. 

Reaper had joined Talon during the crashing wave of depression-filled rage, but even that had simmered down to just an ebbing swirl of salty spray. 

And Widowmaker- 

Well, Widowmaker  _ hadn’t  _ joined. Tortured and reprogrammed without a single, selfless thought left in her mind, Talon had garnered that their experiment was a stroke of genius. They had left her as an empty husk, one with no sympathy and driven towards completing each mission. 

What they hadn’t realized was that there was still a bed of coals left, just waiting to be ignited. That once a fire was lit inside of her, she was infinitely  _ more  _ than she ever was. She might no longer be the person she was born nor the person she was borne from, but she was something  _ better.  _

Talon had a startling tendency to overlook and underestimate complicated matters of affair, from bigger elements to the small details. Their objective, to make the world stronger by introducing conflict, was only well-believed by a very miniscule minority. Most joined up to ease their own tendency towards violence, to satiate their lust for battle. 

Reaper had been like that, once. He had enjoyed very up front and to the point battles, instead of being sidelined for less covered operations. There was something so temptingly amazing about his encounters with the public and underground world, and he couldn’t stifle his need for more. 

Eventually he had tempered, but it was only after longer than a year had passed. There was only so much space strife could fill in his worn heart, black blood pumping his veins chock full of toxins. 

Reaper doesn’t know how he’s survived so long. 

“Lost in your thoughts much?” Sombra’s voice pulls him out of his thoughts. And then as an afterthought, “Today’s the last day.” 

The device is sitting inconspicuously on the metal table, but it’s pulsating brighter lavender than it was on the first hazy day. It almost feels like he’s looking at a ticking time bomb, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. 

And it’s not  _ their  _ lives on the line, either. Well, he guesses they are to some extent, but not in an unknown way. They’ve always been in danger, but even now it’s tangible; they know their threat, and can see it. But for Widow, the danger feels like it’s only continuing to mount, and that it’ll tip and crash down at any second. 

If she doesn’t find them by today, they’ll have to move on without her. It’s fucking terrifying. 

There’s not much to say, and even less to do. It’s an agonizingly slow crawl of a day. When either of them speaks, it feels too loud. Even so, the silence is the most deafening sound in the room. It buzzes in Reaper’s ears like locusts, and makes him want to scream. 

Cabin fever is starting to make them both a tad bit restless. Sombra paces from end to the next, and picks up the habit of throwing a small, rubber ball stolen from end of the room at the wall once Josie leaves as well. It gets annoying, but Reaper can’t make himself tell her to stop. He doubts she would even if he commanded her. 

Anything’s better than the quiet, at least. 

The snow and wind whirls outside and even attempts to look inviting. The clouds part for a few seconds every so often, and even just the small glimpses he takes in feel scorching. She’s somewhere out there, feeling those small bits of sun, and if he deludes himself enough, it seems like they are sharing in the experience together. 

Widow doesn’t require the sun, but from the brief, terse conversations they’ve had about vacations, Reaper can gather that she likes sunbathing. He hasn’t been able to partake in the activity for quite some time; not since his skin cracked open in rivets and bled ink. 

From what Reaper can gather from another’s memories, the sun is- 

It’s nice. 

A dead man had once described the feeling akin to someone else’s smile, but that’s something Reaper has long since forgotten. It’s replaced by a biting cold and scathing burn that Reaper would never even  _ want  _ to replace. 

“From which end do you want to steal a ‘copter from?” Reaper asks, after Sombra has calmed down into one of her silent staring contests with the window. “South end is less populated, but that could mean less fuel there.” 

“Fuck it- can we go all in? Get out of this place with a bang?” 

And as much as Reaper would love to do so, he can’t help but want to make a less risky escape. He hasn’t noticed any patrol units or pestering soldiers, but Reaper knows that Talon is tight on their trail. Even if they got here without making a trace, there is  _ always  _ a risk. He just hopes that the reward is high enough to undermine any risk. 

“South end it is,” Reaper states above Sombra’s indignant squawking. He snorts, and rubs a hand through her scalp in apology. She stutters and stops when he starts curling his fingers through her hair, rubbing along the tech-implants both hidden and unhidden on her head. 

She all but melts into the touch like a content cat, and doesn’t make any more protest. Reaper counts it as a win. 

They run out of food when it hits seven at night, Sombra eating a can of sardines with a plastic fork. Reaper had found that she would eat practically anything, if her unbiased selection the past few days was anything to go by. She ate without discretion, but also knew what to eat when and how much of it to eat. 

Children that were a product of the underground always had their own tells. Sombra showed her hand in small ways, things that anyone less observant than Reaper wouldn’t see. 

The world isn’t as good a place anymore that the skill of sight isn’t required, but most people  _ still _ don’t understand that. Sometimes it’s frustrating. Other times, it’s a blessing. If Reaper had to choose one word for it, though, he would choose usefulness. 

Other’s ignorance is either Reaper’s salvation, or his curse. He’s damned either way.

“Can we at least leave a little present behind…?” Sombra asks, with a small hint of desperation in her voice. She pouts, lip wobbling slightly. “Something flashy, but not, like, explosion worthy.” 

Reaper sighs, not wanting to admit he sort of wants to do the same thing. A sort of  _ fuck you _ to Talon and the people who had ordered the hit. They still don’t even know if Talon was paid out to do it, or if they had single-handedly given the order out. Either way, they would definitely be on board with killing both Reaper and Sombra. 

They don’t treat well to deserters. 

“We’ll take a helicopter, and more supplies,” he starts. When Sombra starts to pout even harder, he quiets her with a raised hand. “You can draw something in the snow, if you like. Preferably something non-phallic.”

The grin on her face slowly starts to spread. “I’ve had enough time practicing my art to proudly say that every surface will be phallic-shaped object free.”

“Don’t quite know whether I believe you or not.” 

_ “Trust _ me, Reaper.”

Reaper hums, playing with the strings on the backpack as he glances at the device again. He’s glad he won’t have to be the one handling it, no matter how much he’d hate to admit it. It’s going to explode under his palms, hot and heavy, with no finesse in his bones. 

The charge they’re giving it  _ should _ last them a week, as Sombra had happily explained that moonlight was better than sunlight. When it hits tomorrow morning, they are going to be up and moving. The darkness will hide them, and give them well enough time to get into the air before light hits. 

Reaper guesses that this is his last time for getting a reward. There’ll be enough time tomorrow to retrieve and place it, though, so Reaper sets the alarm on his watch, and sets up for sleep. 

“I’ve never done anything but.”

* * *

Reaper leaves an Alaskan Malamute on Andy’s front porch, for posterity. The poor thing’s been cleaved right in half, cleaned out and bloodless, but Reaper presumes that it’ll still scare the kid shitless (maybe even literally). It’s a story to tell, alright.

They make their way through back allows and under snow drifts to remain unseen, but it’s not like there’s anyone around anyway. They’re more worried about the satellite coverage that definitely casts its gaze over this region. 

Stopping back to refill their supply of other necessary supplies to their person, both Reaper and Sombra step back in to get what they require. The hacker grabs more than what’s necessary, but they’ll be traveling with room to spare, so. 

(Reaper isn’t about to tell her no; not in any capacity. Small liberties that won’t cause them harm are something he won’t take for himself, but also won’t deny to her.) 

Stealing a helicopter proves to be at least somewhat of a challenge, but not by much. The guards look half asleep at their posts, still rubbing the grime out of their eyes as they yawn endlessly.

All of them are dressed in varying forms of attire. Some wear fur-lined trench coats and drawling accents, while other sound vaguely Eastern and are bundled up in long, draping swathes of cloth. All of them wear some sort of griffon insignia, and he mentally categorizes it to review later. 

Sneaking past them without the use of his powers is a bit tiring, but less tiring than if he had needed to use them. He can’t be lethargic and groggy, seeing as how he’s going to be the first person piloting. Sombra had tried to make a bit of protest when he first mentioned it, but he knows she’s thankful for the rest. It was more of a pride thing, anyways.

Leaving behind no unconscious or, well,  _ dead _ , bodies is quite the feat for them. So much so that the hacker suggests they reward themselves upon arrival to a high-issue helicopter.

Since the town was a factory stockpile and conventional trading post, there aren’t any military type copters. Reaper doesn’t know if it would be better if there was one, or if he’s content with the low end town they ended up in. 

Their momentum comes to a shuddering stop when they finally get to the one they are about to hijack. 

“This is our stop,” Reaper says, drawing a hand up to its sleek, white and blue exterior. He doesn’t want to get in. “I’ll grab some extra fuel cases and see if they have any weaponry on site.”

They hadn’t passed any on their way through the compound, maneuvering around cranes and other heavy duty machinery. Still, he checks around the nearby area and locates a locked cupboard filled with extra fuel. Reaper makes sure it’s the right kind for the one they plan on taking before he swipes them off the shelves. 

By the time he comes back, arms filled to the brim with containers full of gasoline, Sombra has turned on the helicopter. Without the key. 

When she turns and looks at him, she starts laughing. 

_ “Quiet,  _ Sombra,” Reaper girts out, even as he relishes the sound. There’s a moment where Sombra just eases back in the primary pilot’s seat and looks so at home there. She has the poise of a commander. 

Hell, she  _ had been  _ a commander. Sombra wasn’t where she was today because of blindly following others, so it was very unsurprising to initially find out what her resume held. Reaper hadn’t had jurisdiction over whom he took on missions, but he was able to reject or approve them if he gave enough reason why. Talon wasn’t very forgiving, but it knew that it’s operatives knew that. 

Reaper had almost given chase for a reason to reject Sombra from going on missions with him. 

Looking at her, feeling eons away from Talon and everything he’s come to know the past few years, Reaper feels just a little bit like a man he used to know. Peering onward at someone cast into the darkness, but filled with the euphoric sensation that was joy. 

Reaper has no doubt in his mind that this was the right path. He chose. Reaper  _ chose. _

“I chose this,” Reaper echoes, voice filled with grief and elation. “She’s not here, and, and-” 

He can’t really breathe. The smoke is pouring out, and his heart is the furnace of fire feeding it. 

“I chose,” he tries again, but still feels like his mouth is being sewn shut. He can’t look at Sombra anymore. “What am I doing-”

“Yes, what  _ are  _ you doing,” a voice resounds from behind him. It’s sharp, and slices through his body like butter. “The Reaper I know isn’t some snivelling dog, ready to keel at the slightest touch.”

It punches the breath out of Reaper, makes him feel weak in the knees. He would know that smooth voice anywhere; would  _ follow _ it anywhere. So he lets his head turn, to gaze towards it. He can almost feel Sombra doing the same thing, and where he restrains himself from gasping, the hacker lets out a victorious, screeching noise. It’s almost akin to a laugh. 

When he allows his eyes to gaze upon Widowmaker, some small part of his brain denies that it’s her. Doesn’t believe the fact that she’s standing right in front of them. That it’s not her, with sloping features and the silvery, shiny white and blue suit she’s wearing reflecting the scant light available back into his eyes. The darkness of the early morning hours obscures her from his view somewhat.

However, there’s no one on this earth who could exude the prowess and power in just her standing form quite like Widow can. 

Her hip is cocked out, right hand lifted as she perches the girth of her gun on her shoulder. Clicking the release button on the left side of her head-piece, Widow’s face is unveiled from behind the mechanized spider eyes. She tugs on where she’s tied the red sash around her neck; it looks to be tight enough to stay with ease, but not enough to choke her. When she begins to talk, she starts moving towards them, sashaying hips jutting out and the long cut in her suit flowing with the planes of her body. 

She looks open and exposed, but Reaper knows she’s anything but. 

“Leaving without me, were you?” Widow asks, but there’s a cocky grin on her face. 

“Why, we would never!” Sombra replies, hands clapping together succinctly. “Us? Without our favorite  _ araña?” _

“Operative Widowmaker. On time, at least.” Reaper’s voice sounds shaky, like he’s been yelling for an hour and hasn’t stopped. The silent screaming in his head could be to blame. “Get moving.” 

He knows that the sniper is perturbed by his attitude, but doesn’t debate him. She shuffles her stuff into the helicopter, and the clinking noise her heels make when she clambers up the stairs are so familiar it hurts. 

They’re so  _ close  _ to what can only be described as freedom. Sentiment would only hurt them in these moments; time is of essence, and Reaper is desperate. He knows that Widow gets that, so he doesn’t bother being worried about that. 

Two minutes later, they are packing up the last of the equipment and getting in gear. Sombra places the cloaking device in the center of the small helicopter’s seating area, and a metal prong elongates from each side of the cube to stick into the floor. He watches her pat it like it’s a pet, and then flickers back up to Widow’s face. 

She looks tired. Reaper closes his eyes and tries not to let his lip quiver. 

“Ready?” Reaper asks. Widow nods her affirmative, while Sombra mock salutes him. The two of them end up smashed together on a small bench pressed to the right wall, Sombra pulling Reaper’s cap down over her red ears and Widow pulling her legs up over themselves in a cross legged position. He wants to be there with them, so he just turns to the console and powers it up. 

It lights up in small flashes of dull blue and white, then all at once. It gives off a satisfying purr, and then Reaper flicks a few switches to get everything powered up. Sombra had hot wired the console so they didn’t have to steal any keys, so all he has to do is push the joystick forward, and they are slowly lifting into the air. 

The cloaking device doesn’t hide sound, but they’ll be up in the air before anyone can come and check. And then, so far away that there’s no hope of anyone catching them. 

He only dares to look back once they are rising above the town entirely. The two are talking in low, hushed tones that Reaper can’t hear over the sound of the whirring blades, but they look peaceful. 

Serene, even. Like they’ve just found the last piece of a puzzle they haven’t been able to complete for a while. The sight eases something inside of him; makes his conscience fall away into something much more abstract. 

All that it leaves behind is a curious feeling, deep in his gut. It sort of feels like a warning, but even more so like he’s coming home. Home hasn’t been something he could believe in for as long as he could remember, but he thinks he might be able to recall the feeling if only he tried hard enough. 

While he’s up there, silently piloting the helicopter amidst the loud cacophony it produces, Reaper is finally able to think in full. There had been a persistent need to cut his thoughts short the past few days, because without every piece there was no plan. Nothing concrete could have possibly been made, and even if he had tried it would’ve just felt wrong. 

But they are all-

They’re all  _ here. _

If Reaper smiles wide underneath his mask, it’s not like there are others around to see it. Even so, he knows that the two women can sense its delight and mirth, because they turn to look at him. Widow says something into Sombra’s ear, and the hacker laughs, shoulders shaking and eyes crinkling. 

When they touch ground, the calm ease that accompanied them into the air will break; that, he’s sure of. But for now, they stay up in their own little hiding place. The world that fell out beneath them has no place in the air, where their wings spread and flourish and the word freedom means air and breeze and that feeling in the pit of one’s stomach when they dive towards the earth, but know they have wings to catch them. It’s quite heady, in an inexplicable way that has no tangible feeling of right or wrong. 

It just is. 

They’ve made good progress by the time they need to switch pilots, and Sombra volunteers for first swap. It’s an easy workload for the three of them to shoulder, together. 

_ Together,  _ Reaper thinks, and swallows against the nervous bite of his thoughts. There’s a mixture of giddiness matched up in the mixture of feelings, though, so he doesn’t feel too strangled in his own mind. 

Reaper sets the settings to standby, and allows Sombra to clamber over his lap as they trade places. She squeezes the meat of his thigh as he crosses over the dashboard and into the main compartment. Widowmaker is still perched on the decently padded bench, arm placed on the windowsill to support her face. The headpiece of her suit has been stowed away to prevent any breakage, despite its sturdy nature. Sombra could probably fix it up if anything  _ did _ happen to break, but they don’t really have the supplies right now. 

He doesn’t really know how to approach Widow, so he just. Doesn’t. 

Sits down on the bench opposite to hers, arms resting on his knees. He must look defeated; or if not, at least wary. As much as he wants to sink into the cathartic sensation of being with them all once more, he can’t help but want to distance himself even more. 

Widow just raises a perfect eyebrow at him, and he wants to reach out and touch her so much it’s painful. There’s still a deluded-  _ coherent?- _ part of Reaper that still insists she’s not real. Instead, he just proffers his hand to her. 

She throws it a disdainful look, brushing the few stray strands of hair from her face. Then, lifts her hand. After a short pause, she grasps it almost delicately, before clasping it in full. Reaper tries to soak up as much warmth as he can from the limited contact, so he removes the glove on the other hand, pinching the tips of the fabric and steel claws under his leg to take it off. 

The look Widow gives him would seem like pity on anyone else’s face. On hers, it just seems like terrifying fondness. 

Clasping his other hand in the same manner, Widowmaker slots their fingers together in a crushing vice. He wants to feel real again; wants to believe in the cruel, harsh reality of the world. And there’s not much more that Widow’s happier to give. 

The tension falls out of Reaper like a bowling ball, dropping through the bottom of the helicopter and crashing into the world below. 

She’s here, and she’s real. 

“Does it hurt?” Widow manages to ask over the sounds of the helicopter. It’s not as bad in here, but they still have to speak louder to be heard. The only one who has to wear a communication unit is the person piloting, but that’s more for emergency landing purposes. In fact, when he looks up, Reaper notices that they are only looped around Sombra’s neck, instead of on her head. “Reaper?”

“Better,” Reaper answers finally, and he’s honestly surprised that it’s true. “Better,” he says again, and his voice is going all high and fluttery. He feels like he’s twelve. 

Widow doesn’t say anything back; just squeezes his hands even tighter, and gets up to meet him on the other side of the cot. She deposits herself on his right side, sitting up straight. Reaching up and teasing her finger along the edge of his coat, she pulls him down. 

Her shoulder is more comforting than he would like to admit, and he can imagine that his mask must be jutting into her shoulder at an awkward angle. Undoing the clasps, Reaper manages to wrench the thing off and tosses it to the left, where his glove remains. He’s glad for it, because Widow starts to tousle the rough and ragged ends of his hair. 

Chancing a look up at her, Reaper gives out a shallow groan and lets himself melt into her touch. There’s something immaculate about the emotion and tenderness of this moment, but he can’t fully articulate. It’s the kind of instance where no words could describe it, not even if someone stood there and thought about it for years and years. No true answer would become clear. 

Closing his eyes to grit out any tearing up out of sheer force, Reaper digs his face into the smooth slope of Widow’s shoulder. Her fingers trickle up and down the side of his own neck, rubbing behind his ears and running over the creases and cracks in his skin. At one point her fingers delve into one of the spaces, and it inflicts a body-wide shiver, from the tips of his toes to the top of his head. 

Smoke chases her finger back out of the crack, but she just continues on. It tries to curl around her finger, like some sort of tendril of his inner conscience, and she takes a moment to let it. Then she moves, traveling up the rugged skin of his nose, across his forehead, and pushes the hair up at his hairline. He must look silly, hair drawn skyward and all out of sorts from her playing, but Reaper forgets all about his appearance when her hand delves back into his hair. 

She’s awfully good at playing with his hair, and makes quick work of rubbing the pads of her fingers into his scalp. The strain of his pinched eyebrows seems to unfurl, leaving behind a loose feeling. 

Widow starts speaking again, soft tones loud enough to go over the sound of the blades, but quiet enough for it to calm Reaper. It soothes him, all of the sultry and silky words smoothing down his insides and running water over the heat that had been rising in his stomach. 

She spins stories with her words. Outlining her journey out of the compound and through the town, Reaper learns some information that will definitely be valuable when he’s not feeling so dilapidated. As it turns out, the sniper had just started passing through the town as Reaper and Sombra were making to leave. She had seen them enter the building, and followed afterwards. 

“Complications?” Reaper asks her. 

“None more so than what we’re facing,” Widow replies, and Reaper likes the sound of that. We. 

Finally,  _ finally _ back together again. All of them work best as one cohesive unit Sombra’s joking notwithstanding- and even just the fact that they are all here again fills him with a sense of safety. He feels like they could take on the world, if they so desired. 

Hell, they already are. 

There’s no place left for them now. They were cast out of Talon, taken from society, hated and mistrusted by anyone they met. Sombra could pass for someone normal, albeit eccentric; but just based on looks alone, Reaper and Widowmaker can’t blend into the world. There’s a much wider variety of people now, especially after all of the radiation given off from the Omnic Crisis, but the two of them can never really be a part of that world. 

Reaper thinks of another place, one that might be willing to accept them for what they are, and doesn’t dismiss the notion. Loathes it, sure, but doesn’t ignore it completely. They’d technically be political prisoners of sorts, but it’s-

“Anything worth sharing going on up there,  _ chérie?”  _ Widow asks, tapping his forehead. “Important?”

Pausing before answering, Reaper finally says, “There’s a- an idea. We probably don’t have to resort to it, but it might be useful to keep it in consideration.”

Widow waits for him to continue, but he can’t make himself say the words. If he had to guess, he would say that she knows that he’ll tell them if they need the information. 

Even so, Reaper gathers up his wits and puts forth all of his efforts to grit out one word. 

“Overwatch.” 

Widowmaker’s reaction is immediate, but only noticeable since he’s known her so long, intimately and beyond. The muscles in her neck jump and tense slightly, fingerpads pressing just a bit harder into his skin. Her face shows no change, but her eyes seem to go from a warm gold to a scorching hot yellow, like the sun. 

Reaper watches her the whole ride through. He desperately wants her to deny it as a good idea, and to never think of the ludicrous thing again. 

Widow opens her mouth, and licks her bottom lip. Reaper’s crimson eyes follow the movement intently. 

“…It’s plausible,” Widow starts, and his stomach drops again. “But insane.” 

“Aren’t we all, though?” Reaper’s voice seems tremulant when he speaks. “Living underground is fine, but-” 

“Not what you want for us,” she interrupts, and Reaper’s just a little bit in love. 

He can’t say that, so he just rubs his cheek into her shoulder. 

“Exactly,” Reaper says.  _ “Exactly,”  _ Reaper says again, but louder. He lets himself laugh, shoulders shaking. “We’re headed down to Dorado. And from there, who knows.” 

It feels like a weight’s been lifted off of his chest when the option is out in the open. The smallest part of him, a man that’s been long forgotten and driven into the grave, clings desperately to the thought. Even though all that’s attached to the Overwatch in his mind is hatred and despisement, there’s just a hint of memory lingering there. 

It smells like gunpowder and food rations, tastes like dirt and grime, looks like smoke and burning buildings.

_ It smells like fragrant shampoo and sweaty teammates, tastes like too many beers and just enough birthday cake, looks like a man he had loved and his own smile in the mirror.  _

(And it feels like home.) 

Reaper’s scared; terrified, even. He hasn’t allowed himself to unlock his most heavily guarded vault of memories in years. It almost feels like an eternity, rather than a few hundred million seconds of space and silence. 

Another small touch removes him from his reverie. 

Reaper looks down at where Widow’s hand is holding his own again. Then after a breath, he closes his fingers around hers. They stay like that; bitter, aged monsters, trapped and transformed into something grotesque by those who wanted to change the world for the worse. 

They don’t speak again for the duration of Sombra’s turn at the wheel, and Reaper dozes off on Widow’s shoulder. When he’s shaken awake by a slight jolt in the helicopter, Reaper notices that she’s fallen asleep, her head on his. It’s oddly alright. 

His neck has a crick in it and his arm has gone numb, but he still squeezes their laced fingers together and burrows his cheek back into her skin. It’s perfect. 

Reaper chases the berry-blue scent of Widowmaker’s scent back into sleep, and his dreams are filled with the color purple and the sight of a smile. He’s well enough used to the loud sound of the helicopter blades to be bothered by it, but he does wake up again briefly when Sombra starts whistling. It’s obnoxiously loud, and he practically has to growl to get her to stop, but not without her laughter following it. 

And, God forbid, the last thought he has before he drops back off into a deep sleep almost akin to a coma is that he wouldn’t have it any other way. 

* * *

The thing that a movie doesn’t tell you is that it doesn’t go white, before it all goes black. You see it all; no detail is left out. In fact, it’ll be the clearest view of your surroundings you ever have in your entire life.

Reaper doesn’t wake up. He was already awake. 

A more accurate description of what happens is-

Reaper reboots. Shakes himself once, twice; then, pulls himself together and recreates himself. When their helicopter gives a sick, low groan and starts pivoting on itself, Reaper re-writes his entire span of being in half a second. It all goes so quick. 

He’s already moving by the time they start to stutter out of the sky, shouting orders as Sombra desperately scrambles in the commanding seat to rectify the situation. Even Widow looks hopeless, clutching at the sides of the helicopter to maintain her standing position. She follows his every word, finding the compartment that should hold any parachutes. 

“It’s- it’s damaged,” Widow says, and her voice sounds terribly, irreversibly scared over the loud droning of the falling helicopter. There’s something  _ wrong _ about it, and it sends a shiver of fear down his spine. “I can’t open it!”

When he takes his surroundings in, Reaper notices that the container located underneath the seat opposite to the one they had been on is completely ripped out. The material of the helicopter is strong enough not to break off around the hole, but it still creates a large, whistling vacuum. 

“We’ve most likely been hit by a projectile,” Reaper shouts numbly, assessing the damage with frantic eyes and already planning out a second escape plan. 

The only problem is, he doesn’t  _ have one. _ There could be more projectiles their way, more parachutes somewhere else, more land for them to crash and burn in. Reaper has no idea where they are or how far they still have left to travel, but he sorely wishes that he did. 

Sombra’s practically screaming now. It’s a stark difference to the absolute silence that Widowmaker is giving him, wide eyes full of questions. Reaper wishes he had the answers to give her, but he doesn’t. 

“Get ready,” is all he can offer. 

“Get ready for  _ what-  _ our  _ death?!  _ Because that’s sure seeming like the only possibility!” Sombra exclaims, abandoning the control system entirely as the nose starts pointing downward. She pulls herself into the main compartment, manhandling the software as she tries to climb out. Then, a sickening lurch would have pushed her back into the pilot’s seat if Widow hadn’t reached a hand out to stop her. She pulls Sombra to her chest, both now pillowed against the back of the shotgun seat as the helicopter begins to tip even further forward. 

The sick stab in Reaper’s stomach as he watches the two of them cling desperately to each other is almost too much for him. He gathers his wits together, and then stops. 

Hanging on to the handlebar running on the top of the helicopter’s walls, Reaper closes his eyes. Riding out the feeling of falling that rips through his core like a spear, he breathes in. 

And out. 

In, then out. 

Ten seconds tick by. Reaper should know; he counts every single one of them. The sounds of the falling helicopter, the sounds of screaming, the sounds of silence; it all seems to dull. It fades away into the background, and Reaper lets it. Some part of him wants to savor these moments with clarity, but a much larger part just lets it all fade into obscurity. 

Reaper has doubts in his own power, that much he won’t deny. But he also has enough  _ faith _ in his ability to protect his loved ones to try something stupid. His problem in the past was never about his own ability. 

It was about his will. 

And right now, Reaper has a hell of a lot of it. 

Letting himself go, Reaper drops down and careens into the two women. His solidity immediately falls away, and he wraps his brittle, smoky wisp of a form around them as best as he can. Then, he turns his form hard, and doubles back over his body like forming taffy. He does this once, twice, a hundred times- 

Reaper loses count. 

There’s enough air in there for them to breathe, but only slightly. He’ll only have but a moment before his body breaks into a thousand different shards of obsidian, given that they make the crash in one stop. It’s a terrible, no good plan. 

It’s all he has. It’ll have to be enough. 

Their safety is worth the feeling of dying a million times over as they hit the ground, and his body, just-

Falls apart. 

_ This is enough, _ is his last thought, and he’s never been more sure of anything. 

* * *

_ Wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up here here here go now? Bright, bright, bright,  _ go.

* * *

_ First, second, third, fourth, fifth, and seventh- where’s the sixth? Take it all out and try again, never pass go, get out, get out, get out get out get out _ get out.

_ You never passed go, you’re standing still, move- _

* * *

_ Get up, go make yourself some coffee. Take your time, feel at home, get some rest, stay here a while. Nothing there, nothing here, nothing wrong. _

* * *

_ My name’s __________. Pleasure to meet you, Commander Reyes. _

* * *

_ If there’s one man I know with a heart of gold but the exterior of a pit bull, that’s definitely you, bud. Don’t look so surprised, Gabriel; there’s nothing better than a good attack dog. I could give you a good rub, so just keel and roll over. Makin’ fun of you? No way, man. _

* * *

_ Don’t worry about the small details; you’ll still be a commander! So have a little faith in me, eh, Gabe? _

* * *

_...Gabe? _

* * *

_ Reaper. _

* * *

Consciousness is slow, and faulty. Reaper knows this fact like the back of his hand. Well, if he still had one to speak of.

His body is terribly smashed, and it feels like he’ll never pull himself back together again. Each shard of his being is screaming at him so loud it’s almost as if he’s at a concert. Scratch that; Reaper’s the middle of a rave, and the only people in the inner circle is a thousand different versions of himself. It’s almost self-destructive, what he’s doing. 

In trying to gather up the pieces of himself, all he can feel is a full-body, terrifying ache that makes him realize how inconsequential he is. Trust it to him to gather that he’s one speck of a big universe when he’s all broken up and smashed to bits. The world feels so  _ vast. _

He’s not going anywhere, but neither is the world. 

His thoughts fuel his terror, so he cuts himself off. Stops thinking. It’s almost like flipping a very large, noticeable switch in his brain.

What was he doing again? Reaper doesn’t quite know. There’s a sense of regret, and deep, inconsolable fear. It’s roiling in his gut like a parasitic worm, reaching into the crevices of his very soul. If he were to look at his soul, is this what he would see?

Shimmery, shaking bits of black mortar, writhing on the ground like disgusting little bits of a broken being. Reaper supposes that’s true. All he is, is a body, and a soul. 

His soul is laid out on the ground, but where is his body? 

_ Where, where, where, where, where? Body, gone, gone, reshape, reform, regroup- _

Reaper tries to call out to the rest of himself, but it doesn’t quite work; at least, not instantly. It takes a few moments of an infinite timeline, but his pieces begin to vaguely call back to him. He doesn’t quite know which part of himself is the brain, and which one is the body. 

Where’s the arm, the leg, the torso, the mouth, the eyes? Where’s his heart?

(Did he even have one to begin with? Even if he did, it doesn’t beat anymore; not like it’s supposed to.)

The sun is so blue. He stops for a second to admire it, pitching back and forth as it turns around and around in his million-eye view. It’s disorienting, even. Where’s up? Where’s down? Reaper thinks he should know. 

He looks around. There’s a bright, green spread all around him. It’s on the ground, in the air, on himself. There’s also the vague color of something not quite blue and not quite red, but something in between. On closer inspection, it sort of seems like the color’s been smooshed into the ground, and there’s a bit of red there too. The sight makes something naturally predatory in his gut recoil and sharpen, but Reaper doesn’t really know why. 

Reaper sits there, observing the world around him as his pieces come back to make part of the puzzle. As they try to reform, different bits slowly know who they were, and what part of him they were. It’s all very fascinating. 

He spends an eternity like that. Watches the world turn. Comes up with a new rhyme to depict the quality of blue found in the sky. Makes a song in his head about the earth and all of it’s people. There’s a sort of tranquility that he’s never experienced anywhere else in this moment. Reaper wants to bathe in it, and never come back out of its murky depths. 

Reaper wonders if anyone will miss him. 

_ No, _ he thinks, when a bright, golden sun appears in his mind. The not-redblue comes back to his thoughts, and he thinks long and hard before settling on a vague,  _ yes. _ There are a few other colors that briefly swathe his mind, like a chilled green and a rustic red and a dark blue and some variations of white and grey and black in all different tones and shades. 

Each color has a thought, and each mind has a body. Not his mind; not yet. But soon. 

Not soon enough, though, because eternity seems to continue on and on and on and  _ on, _ and there’s no way to stop it. Reaper thinks a bit petulantly on his situation, wanting to ask for it to stop. He’s not about to plead, though, because begging is for the weak. 

His body might be weak, but he can still think; can still breathe. That has to count for something, right?

Reaper waits. He waits for days. Months. Years. Whole lifetimes; yet, nothing happens. 

And when the eternity of time and its conundrum finally hit their limit and break, Reaper thinks that it’s almost feels a bit like dying all over again. 

* * *

 

Reaper wakes up exactly twelve seconds after he shattered.

Everything feels a bit groggy and stilted, like his parts and bits aren’t all in the right place.  _ He’s _ not in the right place; there’s nothing but entitled wrongness about his current position. 

It takes him less than half a second to process his surroundings, but it takes another to remember what had led up to this. As soon as he recollects himself, though, Reaper is already moving. Racing towards the prone figures, Reaper stumbles. 

His feet feel like lead weights, as does the rest of his body. If he weren’t so self-aware at the moment, he would chalk it up to the ground, or his shoes, but Reaper knows it’s not that. 

It’s the way he essentially just broke his body- and, dare he even think it,  _ soul- _ like throwing a glass tea set on the ground, and watched it all happen in insanely detailed clarity. His head goes a bit funny thinking about it all. 

His head goes a bit sick when he sees the damage they’ve done, though. 

There’s a massive amount of debris from the helicopter scattered around the wide meadow they’ve landed in. It looks exactly like what it is; a crash site. Bits and pieces of ripped and mangled metal lay scattered, like a smattering of puzzle pieces that had been torn apart. And if that looked bad, the bodies lying in front of him twisted something even worse inside the pit of Reaper’s stomach. 

Sombra is off to the right, and her left leg is bent at an unnatural angle. The sight of her body in such a state makes Reaper want to curl up, but then he sees Widowmaker. 

“Oh god,” Reaper whispers, because he can’t speak any louder. He’s screaming inside of his mind, and his pulse is rocketing wildly in his ears. The droning repetition of his heartbeat feels like a drum that’s resonating inside of his head.  _ “Oh god.” _

There’s-

There’s something wrong with Widowmaker. 

A silver beam is poking out of the back of her head, and blood is coating it from the entry point to the tip. Stumbling in an attempt to get to them, Reaper catches the toe of his shoe on a rock and pitches forward. 

When he hits the ground, Reaper hisses as a few stray rocks and rabble cut up his hands through the fabric of his gloves. When he tries to get up again, his legs refuse to stop shaking. He trips again, and when he goes sprawling forward this time, his mask goes flying off. 

Reaper leaves it. He has to get up, needs to  _ help them- _

He can’t get back up again, so Reaper crawls. Dragging his body on his hands and knees, Reaper painstakingly makes his way to the two women. 

As he draws closer, the swirling, sickly feeling in his gut continues to grow greater and greater. Reaper starts smelling the blood as he crawls forward, inch by inch. It permeates the air and wipes any trace of nature from his nose. 

“Please,” Reaper whispers; to who, he doesn’t know. Someone. Anyone. “Be safe, be safe, be safe-” 

Upon closer inspection, Sombra’s only visible injury is her twisted leg, so he gives her the comfort of checking her pulse before he’s dragging himself to Widow’s body. Her right arm is tucked under her body, and she’s laying face-first in a pool of what is most likely her own blood. 

He wants to move Widowmaker, but knows that might make the injury worse. 

“Fuck,  _ please,”  _ Reaper moans when he notices that the shaft goes through both ends of her head. He wants to cry. 

In most circumstances-  _ all _ circumstances besides this very specific one- he wouldn’t even feel the  _ need _ to cry. 

Now; he lets it take over his body in the form of a long, suffering sob that wrecks his whole entire body. A shiver runs from the tips of his toes to the top of his spine, arching through Reaper’s neck and tickling the hairs on his head. 

Checking for Widowmaker’s pulse, he almost chokes on his tears when he pulls his fingers away. They still feel the echo of a low, weak beating on them, and Reaper has never been so eternally grateful for anything in his life. 

It’s what comes afterwards that’s the worst part. 

Reaper wants to turn her over so he can get a better look at the injury, but that could move the rod when he has nothing securing it in place. Eyes searching frantically, Reaper finally settles on taking his coat off and frantically tearing strips of fabric from it. 

First, he wipes some of the blood away from the back of her head while holding everything still. Then, he takes a long strip and starts wrapping it around her head on the sides of the wound to try and help immobilize it. 

It’s only after he’s done that Reaper notices that there’s still new, fresh blood flowing beneath her body. Sucking his breath in, the man runs his sweat, grimy hands down the sides of her body. He’ll have to turn her over. 

Pushing her with the utmost care, Reaper stops her when she’s on her left side. Her head lolls a bit, and he flinches. Her right eye looked horrible and grotesque  _ before _ he had put the bandages on, but it almost looks even worse now, when he can’t see the damage. His mind is left to fill the gaps in his sight, and the images that rise unbidden make bile coat his throat. 

Turn his attention back to Widow’s front, he sees the obvious cause of the blood. Her right hip looks like there’s been a chunk of skin taken from it. It’s as if a monstrous dog came and took a bite of her flesh, ripping and mangling it so that anyone could see the muscles and tendons underneath. Quickly staunching the bleeding with more of his coat, Reaper starts tearing up a bit again. 

He can’t let his vision become muddy, so he rubs the tears away even as his shoulders shake. 

Reaper presses his fingers back to Widow’s wrist, checking the heartbeat there instead of from her neck. It’s still just as slow, but there’s more of a regular rhythm. 

But they aren’t out of the woods just yet. 

Reaper looks around once more at his surroundings, this time with a clearer brain. There aren’t any signs of life anywhere, and Reaper doesn’t know whether to be thankful, or distraught. 

Reaper tries not to touch Widowmaker any more than he has to, for fear of internal hemorrhaging. 

“Widow,” Reaper whispers, as if scared that the words will shake her awake. If she’s awake, she’ll move her head. 

He doesn’t know what to do. Reaper’s last ditch effort had only been about letting them survive the crash, not about what came afterwards. There’s a split second where he thinks back to the calm, soothing nature they had on the helicopter, but he immediately punches that thought right out of his mind. 

Reaper has to focus on  _ now.  _ Nothing will ever come out of dwelling on what he can’t have. 

After he’s fretted after Widow for a good few minutes, Reaper pulls himself back out of the deep cave that his mind had become. Both Sombra and Widow had the chance for at least a concussion, but Widowmaker will be lucky to have that be the worst of the injuries to her brain. He’s no medical professional, but-

The thought instantly clouds his mind. Reaper had evaded death, once before. With as much strength as he can muster, Reaper heaves a long, heavy sigh. There’s only one person on this earth that Reaper knows could fix this, if it’s as bad as he thinks. 

He could wait for Widow to wake up and assess the damage from there, but if it’s serious than any waiting period will cause more harm than good. Reaper has to make a decision, and quickly. 

Looking back at Sombra’s prone form, all twisted and mangled, then back at Widow’s, it’s not a hard one to make. In fact, it might possibly be the easiest choice he’s made in his life. 

Crawling back towards Sombra, he starts fashioning a splint out of debris and fabric. He twists the leg back into place with careful precision, and the hacker’s breath hitches slightly in her unconscious form. It sends a stab of guilt and grievance into his stomach, but he pushes it back. Reaper rips the fabric of Sombra’s legging away, to get right to the skin. It’s hot outside, so he doesn’t need to worry too much about her catching cold. Even so, he puts the ragged remainders of his over her body for cover and warmth. 

Making the splint with just as much care as he had wrapped Widow’s head, Reaper puts the finishing touches on it. It looks terrible and misshapen, but it’ll do. 

Pulling back the coat a bit, Reaper starts rifling through Sombra’s breast pocket. He filches the gun out, before reaching the other side and feeling for his objective. When he touches it, it feels brittle and bent under his touch. A cold, sweeping swell of fear pulsates through him as he pulls it out, praying that it’s still usable. 

The screen of the black and purple phone is cracked at the top, with spiderweb cracks running along the center. He pushes his finger on the home button with shaky hands, but it doesn’t turn on. 

“Damnit,  _ damnit all,”  _ Reaper says, and there’s a tremor in his voice he can’t stifle. Pressing the button a few more frantic times does nothing else. The glassy surface reflects the haunted image of his face back at him, and it’s only then that Reaper notices he’s crying again. 

Worn out, the man grasps it with both hands and touches his forehead to the screen. Closes his eyes, so he can’t look at how desolate they look in the dilapidated mirror. This can’t be defeat for them, he can’t believe it;  _ won’t _ believe it-

The screen goes bright. 

When he opens his eyes, he sees a hand outstretched towards the phone. Sombra’s long, purple nails are chipped and the pain is cracking, but there aren’t any scratches on the rest of her hand. He looks up, up, up; traces the lines of her ruffled suit with his eyes, canvases the slightly focused look she has on her face. Her eyes seem to be going in and out of focus, and it makes Reaper both furiously elated, and desperately burdened at the same time. 

They don’t have any medical supplies. He can’t take away her pain no matter how much he wants to. When she goes to move and turn over, he rushes forward to stop her. The hurt groan she makes when she tries to lift her leg sends another punch of fear to his gut. 

“Shh,” Reaper murmurs to her. “It’s alright; stop moving, Sombra.” 

His voice is scratchy and the beginnings of smoke are starting to pour from his mouth, but all he cares about right now is ensuring Sombra’s well-being. She coughs a few times, but her grip on Reaper’s wrist is strong, and warm. 

She’s so goddamn warm. 

He lowers his face to press right up against her cheek. Sombra lets him, as she starts to regain her breath from the stuttering mess it had been before she tried to move. His hair tickles her nose, and he presses kisses from the bottom of her chin all the way to her forehead. 

When he looks again, Sombra’s eyes still have that gleam of hurt in them; but he finds they also have a warm stroke of fondness residing there as well now. 

“Where-” Sombra tries to start, but is cut off by another cough. Reaper wishes he had some water to give her, but he doesn’t. 

All he can offer right now is his physical being. It’s not much, but it’ll have to be enough until he can call for help; quite literally, in fact. 

“At the moment, somewhere in the United States. Made it past Canada; but after that, I have no idea,” Reaper tells her. He doesn’t like his lack of knowledge. “No damn idea.” 

Sombra stays silent for another minute. The sounds of nature and her breathing are all that he can hear, but it’s so,  _ so _ loud in his sensitive ears. He wishes for true silence. He wishes for true noise. 

He wishes for a lot of things; the only decently obtainable one right now is safety. 

“Is this touch activated?” Reaper concludes, holding the phone up and pulling back from her face. “Couldn’t get it working for a second.”

Sombra laughs shallowly, and it’s like he’s listening to the bells to the gate of heaven. It doesn’t matter how dirty and rustic it sounds; just that it’s from her, to him. “Something like that.”

Closing his eyes and heaving a small sigh, Reaper dithers over the phone for a few seconds. When Sombra makes another pained cough, he stills. Then, fingers at the screen for a second. The call option is obnoxiously bright, and he doesn’t want to click it, but he does so anyways. 

There’s a split second where Reaper fears he’s forgotten the number. Then, without hesitation, his fingers fly over the keyboard at a rapid pace. It’s like it never left his mind. 

Reaper waits with bated breath as he listens to the calling tone. He’s lucky enough to have signal here; he’ll be even luckier if someone picks up. Feeling antsy, Reaper presses the speakerphone option so that Sombra can hear too. 

Her eyes are still a bit unfocused and hazy, but she’s regained a bit of her natural color. A bruise is forming on her temple, as it looks a bit yellow. When a small noise jolts him away from her face, Reaper finds himself swallowing harshly. This is it. 

Reaper supposes he could chalk it up to debris and trauma that he starts tearing up again. 

_ “Hello?”  _

Reaper never wanted to hear such a voice ever again. It stirs up too many rotten, broken memories. Sombra breathes in against her rattled lungs, and he can tell that she recognizes the voice. 

_ “Who is this?”  _ Mercy asks, and she still sounds so  _ young. _

It takes Reaper another moment of strangled silence to find his voice. 

“Angela,” he whispers, trying not to sound too emotional. He hates this woman just as much as he trusts her, and it hurts to admit it, even if it’s just in his own mind. 

Mercy inhales sharply. The sound registers even through the mic in the phone, despite how quiet it must be. There’s a tense moment of silence. 

_ “Gabe? Is that you?”  _ Mercy questions, like she can’t believe it when  _ she’s _ the one who made him this way; into this indestructible being who can’t die. Or maybe it’s just the fact that he contacted her at all. 

Even he’s still surprised that he decided on her, specifically. Call it personal intuition, but Reaper knows for sure that she can at least bring someone back from death. Or pull someone back from the brink-

Hopefully Widowmaker’s case is the latter. 

“I need your help,” Reaper starts, and he hates how small his voice feels. He coughs around another rasp before continuing, “Not for me, though.” 

And  _ fuck  _ if Reaper was done lamenting another man’s life, because his heart still clenches when all she says is,  _ “Where?” _

“Trace this number. And just-” 

Reaper stops. Looks at Widow’s prone body a few meters away. Looks back to Sombra’s slowly steadying features. Looks at his hands that are softly trembling as he clutches the phone.

_ “Please, _ hurry.” 

Reaper hangs up. Sits back on his haunches. Presses a hand to the bridge of his nose. 

“Don’t want to get wrinkles on your face prematurely,  _ cariño.”  _

Reaper snorts softly, and traces the scars on his face. It’s a bit too late for worrying about something like that. Sombra must read his mind, because she pries his hand away and forces him to look at her. Casting a glance to Widowmaker, Sombra’s smile goes cold, like the ice they had traveled through to get here. 

“You did good,” Sombra commends, even though they both know that might not be enough. Reaper’s best never really has been; not now, not ever. The hacker starts coughing again, and Reaper wants so badly to have water to give her. Her throat sounds parched and cracking, almost like his own on a good day. “Us three against the world.”

“Together,” he murmurs like a broken record player. “If Mercy tries anything-”

“Oh, whatever, Reaper,” Sombra interjects, waving a hand through the air lazily. “You know she’ll probably show up with backup, even if we  _ had _ specified not to.” 

Reaper’s mind whirs with the possibilities, flitting from one face to the next with a whisper of cognicity stemming from each one. He doesn’t want to see any of them face to face; in battle, there’s the comfort of having a mask. 

In the depths of the hell Reaper is currently residing in, there’s no mask, no comfort. He abandoned those thoughts as soon as he could. But the alternative makes him weak and fragile in the eyes of others, even when he truly isn’t. 

He feels a tremble course through him before he gives up, sinking down next to her and resting his head so that he can still see Widow from the corner of his eye. They’ll most likely have regained enough strength in the next few hours to hobble their way over to her, but for now-

This’ll do. 

(It has to.) 

* * *

He notices the small jet when it’s about a mile or so out. Reaper’s ears have been straining to hear anything new for the past few hours, and so when he notices it, he  _ notices it. _ There’s a distinct, terrible familiarity that comes with it, and a tremor shakes him before he stops it.

Reaper isn’t quite sure how to present himself, so he doesn’t. He slips the mask back on, but doesn’t do much else to correct his poise. Only one of Reaper’s guns had made it out of the crash in functioning condition, as well as Sombra’s pistol. He had noticed a few shards of Widow’s headset and the casings for some of her bullets before he let himself turn away. 

Sombra and Reaper are camped out around Widow, covering her from both sides to the best of their ability. There’s a tense line in the air that Reaper tries not to tug on. He’s quiet, mostly. 

They've been sitting there for what probably amounted to fourteen hours when he becomes aware of the incoming jet. It makes him chew on the edge of his lip, and smoke keeps trying to pour out. 

Closing his eyes and breathing in the scent of pine and blood, Reaper calms himself down. It’s unnatural, the way his heartbeat slows and the breath in his throat cools. It’s just another thing that makes him less human; something for him to be all the more thankful to, now that that particular trait is coming in handy. 

Reaper leans forward to wash away all the other scents, and he comes back with the smell of Sombra’s sweat and sense of being in his nose. It’s amazing. He brushes forward towards Widow, and does the same thing to her. Except this time, he stops an inch from her, as if he’s scared of what will happen if he touches her. 

Maybe she’ll break into a million, tiny pieces like Reaper had? The thought makes him sick, so he tries to cast it from his mind. It doesn’t work, not entirely. But it’s enough for now. 

(Is anything he tries to do ever really enough at this point?)

Reaper watches with baited breath as the jet appears beyond the line of trees that line their smashed clearing. One half of him hopes that it’s going to stop for them. 

The other half tries to think hard enough to make it pass right over them without stopping. With no cover in the field, Reaper hates how exposed they are. 

The jet slows down as they reach the clearing. This is either their saviour, or their damnation. Reaper thinks it might be both no matter who is in that jet. Sombra starts locking up her muscles and preparing to move, despite her current handicap. When he had asked, the hacker had said that she could still produce a decent EMP wave, as well as use her translocator. Unfortunately, her gloves malfunctioned during the jarring impact, and both the hacking and thermoptic camo were disabled in the process. 

They most likely won’t need it, but the fact that it isn’t there as a resource is worrying. This whole entire situation is worrying, but there’s not much Reaper can do. Well, except worry. Which is exactly what he continues to do as the jet starts to lower down into the center of the clearing. 

With a faint hissing sound the cockpit unfolds, and a blast of steam mists over it almost comically. Reaper clenches his hand around the soft gravel by Widow’s side. The light blue jet is about 15 to 20 meters from them, so he can’t make out any talking. It just all sounds like a muted, garbled mess of tones. 

But Reaper can’t help but still when he sees the first person walk out of the swirling mass like a ghost. His body freezes and locks, and he grits his teeth so harshly he can feel them creaking. Reaper’s eyes work just fine. 

There’s no mistaking the rustic cut of Soldier 76’s jacket, nor the gun he swings over his shoulder as he casts his eyes around the field. There’s a certain poise to his stance that feels so achingly familiar to Reaper, but he pushes those thoughts out of his head. 

“Of  _ course _ of all people, she’d bring  _ him,” _ he hisses underneath his breath. Sombra’s face holds no emotion when he catches her out of the corner of his eye, but he can tell by gut feeling alone that her tongue is running across the roof of her mouth habitually. “Damn.”

“Damn is right,” she whispers back. 

He wants to take them and run. Nothing good will ever come out of the situation he’s been dealt right now, and the forest seems like the better option of the two. Stay, and be incarcerated. Run, and receive little to no medical attention for someone who desperately needs it. 

For a second time, Reaper wishes he wasn’t who he is. Wishes he were weaker; wishes he were  _ stronger _ . 

Wishes he knew which decisions were the right ones, and which ones were so drastically off course that they shouldn’t even be a thought to begin with. Because right now, his brain seems to think he’s terribly shit at making them. 

His mind sort of-

Blanks. 

As 76 walks towards them, Reaper’s eyes seem to go cross. Two images overlap one, and the military jaunt seems to blur with a more relaxed, cocky sway. He shakes his head as it happens, trying not to get caught up in it as he’s done in the past. He jolts when he feels a touch on his arm, and settles when Sombra’s grasp stills around him, unmoving. 

Mercy pops out of the loading docker next, staff in hand and a kit laden in her arms. She’s a familiar sight too, but he doesn’t disorient at it the way he did with Soldier. She bumbles along, jogging to catch up to 76. 

Another man, dressed in hospital garb and combat boots, filters out after them, holding more supplies in his hand. Reaper doesn’t recognize him, so he must be an off-record source Mercy pulled in. Most likely, she brought him out on a favor. He can’t think of many- or anyone, really- that would willingly participate in what was about to go down. 

Or  _ go down _ for the subliminal, crossing-the-line mutiny Mercy was about to commit. Overwatch may still be on the down-low, running from the underground up, but even he recognized that they still catered to the book. 

Reaper holds his insides together, even though he’s ripping apart at the seams. He must look terrible; what with his coat misplaced and all that remained underneath being his hoodie and filthy undershirt. Soldier tilts his visor when he gets close enough, and Reaper can imagine the calculations going on behind the screen. 

Reaper’s hackles rise.

Not wanting to talk first lest he betray any sensitive information from his trauma-addled brain, the three of them wait until Mercy comes over to start. 

She steps forward without preamble, shooting Soldier a glance as he moves to step forward. He’s thankful for that. He doesn’t want the man closer to Widowmaker’s vulnerable body than he has to be; just having him this close is making Reaper’s skin crawl. 

“What’s already been done to the body?” 

Hearing someone describe Widow as just a body makes him want to throw up.

Reluctantly, Reaper starts verbally detailing the crude clean-up job he had done on Widow’s head and hip. The medic just waits patiently, nodding every few seconds while her eyes scrutinize the sniper. She places the kit down on the ground and goes to kneel around her legs. 

When she motions with her hand, the other nurse rushes forward. Reaper just barely stops himself from growling as the man approaches with what look to be straps, and Sombra visibly tenses as well. Still gripping her hand, he gives it a squeeze and receives a comforting one back. 

The two medics make quick work of gently strapping Widowmaker down to the ground. Reaper and Sombra have to move when they start strapping in the body further up, albeit with no small amount of glaring on Reaper’s part. Not that they can see his face, but his stance must give it away enough for them to tell. 

His body pulls taut like a fishing line as Soldier goes around the body to draw closer to them. Sombra sends another squeeze his way through their handheld connection. Her emotions seem to run into him like funnel, swirling and whirling inside him like sedatives. Makes him more relaxed; calm, even. 

He knows she can protect him from Soldier, in any means. 

The man stands there awkwardly, all three of them watching the medical professionals work. Reaper’s eyes don’t leave the sniper’s body no matter how much his gaze wants to flick over to him. Soldier coughs once, twice, then another third, even more awkwardly. If Reaper has to say, he’d guess that only the recent resurgence of Overwatch was the first real human contact the man had since the last disbandment. His insides feel messy and convoluted, like Soldier’s mere eyes can stir them up. 

Shoulders rising as Mercy cautiously lifts Widow’s head, Reaper sucks in a breath and tries not to slash his fingers through the blonde’s face. She has a pitying look directed at the woman beneath her, and it makes his skin crawl. 

_ “Cálmate,”  _ Sombra whispers, digging her fingernails into his glove. It sort of stings, but he thinks that it’s what he needed because now he’s also aware of the gun cocked his way. 

Sparing one single, long glance at Soldier 76, Reaper swivels his head to make his intentions obvious. 

“If that’s supposed to intimidate me, then try harder,” Soldier states brusquely, the rough grit of his voice infuriatingly grating on Reaper’s ears. He wants to smash the man’s face into the ground, rub his hands all over the wounds, and feel the blood between his fingers. It’s almost embarrassing how strong the urge is, but Reaper’s had enough time fighting him to stifle it fairly quickly. 

He can’t quite catch the growl that slips through as he turns back to Widow, though. 

Bringing himself back down by tightening his grip, Reaper continues to watch from the outside as the beam sticking out of Widow’s head is shaved down on both sides. To stop it from getting in the way, he supposes. Reaper doesn’t even know what they are going to be doing, so he holds his breath as the first scalpel digs into Widow’s flesh. They seem to pry open the wound from the back of her head, checking around and poking the flesh with their tools. 

Reaper lets out another tiny growl as they stuff more tools into the front end, tucked around the spear coming out of her eye. They had undressed the wounds of Reaper’s sub-par bandaging before continuing, and he eyes the discarded, bloody bandages with contempt. 

The two medics talk quietly amongst themselves, looking back and forth between her form and their current arsenal of tools.

Mercy looks up to address them. Mainly, Reaper. “We have to wake her up while we work; to monitor and control brain activity, since the pole may be damaging the right hemisphere.” All of her words are thought out and concise, but he still wants to ask for her to clarify. 

A brief thought passes his mind about killing everyone, taking Widowmaker, and running away with Sombra in tow. As it is, the hacker just presses her side up against his own, from toe to shoulder. 

“Do what you need,” is all he says. She nods, and pulls out a small, metal prod. She clicks a button down at the bottom, and it gives a faint whirr before illuminating from the line of circular holes running down the sides. It makes Reaper wary, but all he can do is watch as it all happens. 

And it happens  _ fast. _

One moment Widowmaker is lying still on the ground, the next she’s trying to writhe and squirm away like every touch burns her. But that’s not the worst part. 

The worst part of it is her screaming. The sound is loud and piercing, and it rings in Reaper’s ears so much it hurts. He looks at Widow with a sick, horrifying fascination that he can’t quite staunch, and it strikes him down to the core. He sees out of the corner of his line of sight that Soldier has gone stiff and rigid, gun tensed in his hand. Sombra looks the exact same way Reaper feels, and her eyes are wide and terrified. 

He takes one more look at everything, and understands that this’ll be the bane of his nightmares for years to come. If not that short of a time, then for the rest of his cursed life. 

Reaper feels a whine rise and build in his throat as he watches the two medics at work. He feels every inch of pain himself, as if he were sharing Widow’s body like he had Sombra’s, and Reaper knows he deserves it. For what he’s done to her, for everything she’s taken on due to his rash decision to leave so suddenly. 

If-  _ when _ Widowmaker gets out of this, Reaper knows both he and Sombra can agree to pamper her like there’s no tomorrow. Really, there  _ isn’t _ a tomorrow when they have to live everyday like it’s their last. It’s not an entirely untrue statement, at least. 

Reaper’s ears seem to drown in the echoing screams, and he watches without looking away at the grotesque sight. The medics poke and prod at everything, inserting more uniquely odd devices into her flesh and applying different salves. Her screams continue, and sobs wrack her system. Sombra squeezes his hand again, and he feels himself go numb. 

There’s nothing that he can do.

But even so, there’s a desperately microscopic part of him that thinks it’ll all be okay, now that they’ve done quite the opposite of what Reaper thought they’d ever do. Thinks that they’ve found where they need to go. Thinks that whatever they have to face from now on, they can come out on top. 

He hasn’t consulted this part of himself since he died; had gone so far as to say it never existed to begin with. The name of it rolls around in his mind a couple hundred thousand times, like a pill that just won’t go down. 

He knows its name, and it’s Gabriel Reyes. 

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warnings for:  
> -graphic depiction of a helicopter crash  
> -graphic depiction of a head injury  
> -graphic depiction of a broken leg  
> -semi-graphic depiction of some first aid, as well as futuristic mumbo-jumbo technological medical assistance  
> -dissociation 
> 
> dont hesitate to tell me if it needs more tags or tw notes down here !!


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